Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Is Politics Beyond Satire?" with Mark Humphries

Transcript

"Is Politics Beyond Satire?" with Mark Humphries · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:00
G'day, humans! Few things in this world make people more uncomfortable than being made fun of.
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Nobody likes having the fun poked out of them, especially people who are powerful.
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I find because the powerful sought to be powerful because they wanted to feel important
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and be respected by other people and be noticed. The last thing they want is for someone to bring
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them down a peg and point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Well, that's what I've spent
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much of my life trying to do. And it's what our guest today has devoted his to doing much better
0:33
and with much more of a laser satirical focus than I. Mark Humphries is well-known to Australian
0:39
audiences for his satirical sketches on the country's flagship current affairs program.
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He owns the sort of final two minutes of the week in which he takes a swipe at politicians.
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It's the sort of thing that might sound a little bit something like this.
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In recent months, leaders that both are federal and a state level have been accused of
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passing the buck to discuss accountability and politics I'm joined now by the federal minister
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for the buck. As minister for the buck, does the buck stop with you? That's actually a common
1:10
misconception. We are in a public health emergency, which means that buck responsibility actually
1:15
transfers to the states. So you're passing the buck onto state governments? Well, for me to pass
1:20
the buck on, I'd have to be in possession of the buck, which I'm clearly not because the buck
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doesn't stop with me. Then where has the buck stopped? At the state border, the buck can't leave
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unless it is granted an exemption, which it won't be since the buck won't stop with me.
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That is Mark Humphries on the 730 report recently. It's a great tradition of Australian comedy to
1:40
that sort of rapid fire political satire. He stands in the walks in the footsteps of John Clark
1:46
and Brian Doer who previously held that piece of television real estate. And he's a fascinating
1:52
young guy. He is young. He's even younger than me. And I think of myself as being a wee babe in
1:57
the woods with a fascinating life story and fascinating insights into what social media and
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the political climate and the pace of views is doing to our brains. I hope that you enjoy this
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uncomfortable conversation as much as I enjoyed having it with the one I'm only Mark Humphries.
2:22
Well, let me chance for the relationship between siblings and especially brothers.
2:25
There's always fascinated me since I used to go to tennis camps when I was like,
2:30
eight or something, and at least two boys, I guess maybe I always say this, sir.
2:37
But these two boys, you want to ensure me for defamation.
2:41
These two boys, they were just, they had a reputation. They were, they were, they were just,
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they were, you know, they were the first kids you'd come across who swore.
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Well, these are the identical twins who killed everybody.
2:51
Or is that a monocking of bad telling brothers?
2:53
No, so this is, anyway, so these two boys,
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um, yeah, okay, I'll say the first name.
3:00
Okay, but one of the first names is a definite giveaway.
3:03
Oh, just make it up.
3:05
Okay.
3:06
It was Jason and Blacen.
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Oh, Jason and Blacen, let's go with this.
3:09
So Jason and Blacen, they were rough, okay?
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And I, you know, I grew up in Crosnus, Sydney, Northern suburbs, just very polite boy.
3:17
Yeah.
3:18
And these kids were rough.
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For non-sidney sideers, this is a very effeater.
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That's it.
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It's a prosperous, nice, nice, nice area.
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Anyway, these kids were rough.
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And so, but they were, one of them was older.
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Let's say Jason was older and Blacen was younger.
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No way you're keeping track of which one to which.
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I'm making notes.
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Okay.
3:38
So anyway, and what was fascinating is the way that Jason would talk down to Blacen all the time.
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He would always just go, Blacen, you're so fat.
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Are you so, yes, I'm not.
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He would always just, he would just rip into him.
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He was so cruel to his brother.
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I think they're going to recognize themselves just from the impersonation.
3:53
That's right.
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And he would, he would just rip into his younger brother.
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But as soon as some other kid would go,
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yeah, yeah, Blacen, you're really fat, Jason would go,
4:02
Hey, that's my brother you're talking about.
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And I was, I thought, wow, that's interesting.
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Well, that's true of all families, nations, faiths,
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any, any clubs, right?
4:12
You weaken criticized.
4:13
Sure.
4:13
But do you not allow to criticize us?
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Like Aussies will be as self-deprecating about Australia
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and self-criticalized as you could possibly be.
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But the moment and non-Austradian
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is something negative about Australia.
4:25
Weren't your buddy going back to,
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you'd go back to your bloody country then?
4:28
Well, I mean, I was just, I did talking pictures the other day
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with Mike Bowers and there was Scott Morrison was in New Zealand.
4:34
There was a cartoon, a New Zealand cartoonist
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had made fun of our Prime Minister.
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Our Prime Minister?
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And suddenly I was a little offended.
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Yeah, of course.
4:43
Hey, exactly.
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I spent all my life doing nothing but lampooning him.
4:47
That's it.
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Professionally.
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I leave just into a load.
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I let you have it.
4:51
OK?
4:52
How do you?
4:54
So we were talking earlier about Norm McDonald
4:56
because you were saying that you'd seen a video on the electronic
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interwebs.
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And so you mean in conversation with the great norm?
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That's it.
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Would have been from our post live.
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You were saying, how did I book him?
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Would it have been very sweet if you don't ask him to assume
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that you had some time that I had any control or influence
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or anything?
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No, when our post live was created in 2012,
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there was a huge amount of.com money for things like this.
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And the Huff Post brand was ascendant.
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And the Huff Post website was the most
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read online news website in the world.
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And online only.
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I mean, the short BBC or something was more.
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But and so when they said that they wanted to throw the hat
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in the ring and do 12 hours a day of video content,
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it went from yeah, it went from 10 to 10
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with the final four hours being done at an L.A.
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studios because of the time difference.
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And so we were hosting like four to six 20 to 30 minute shows
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every single day.
5:58
Oh my god.
5:59
And so the bookers, they had an army.
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So they had a lot of money.
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And they had a they had the they book they
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had the best bookers who knew everybody.
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So they could get anyway.
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And it was also the cool place to to come if you're a celebrity.
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Like you could do you could do the morning shows.
6:13
You could do Letterman, who might give you eight minutes.
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But on Huff Post, you got half an hour.
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It looks very relaxed and comfortable.
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Yeah, so you weren't likely to be taken out of context.
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No, of course, we tried our best.
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So people like Norm just came through.
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There was a period where they were people of that caliber
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were going, we're coming through quite regularly.
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And for some reason, I think the clip of me and Norm
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survived the various takedowns of all of the copyright
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intellectual property disputes that were leveled against
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the Huff Post material, which you can't find now.
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Because the whole place got bought
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by America's largest telecommunications company.
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And we all know what a commitment to the creative art
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executives at telecommunication companies have.
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So they did not look kindly on the cost of this enterprise
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and did not believe the the sunny,
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rosy pictures for when it was going to reach profitability
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in the 2050s presumably.
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And they took everything down.
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But Norm survived somehow.
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So there you have it.
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But that was a great, great time and a great honor.
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Was he one of the, you know,
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was he one of the gets that you were really thrilled about?
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Was he someone you were already a fan of?
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Yes, absolutely.
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I mean, I grew, I remember when I was a little kid,
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I would tape Letterman on a VCR on a VHS.
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And I would watch it back in the morning
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and create mixed tapes of highlight reels of people like Norm.
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Fantastic.
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And he was such.
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It was, yeah, he was just brilliant.
7:45
That's great.
7:46
I used to tape McCarleth tonight,
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when Sean McCarleth had a channel nine show for one year.
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And this is an Australian comedian who now has a
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satirical show.
7:56
But for a while, I had a talk show.
7:58
Yeah, well, I think the story is it,
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he might be like sort of a jumpsuit for American listeners.
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But at the ABC, he had the McCarleth program,
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which was essentially, which is quite some of the
8:06
Meredith Helen that's sort of largely a sketch program.
8:09
But when he went channel nine,
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apparently they said, yeah, so it's a,
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you know, so there'll be a variety show
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so you can, you know, you can do your sketches
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and what have you in there.
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And obviously, you know,
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you'll do some interviews,
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but obviously you've done some interviews
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on the previous program.
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And Sean was like, yeah, but didn't you notice they were all played
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played by Wayne Hope?
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Like, they're all scripted sketches.
8:27
They're all scripted sketches.
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So, you know, suddenly Sean's thrown in
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having to interview people.
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And it was so funny, like, he's his whole approach
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to interviews, like, was clearly just comedy first.
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Like, yeah, we'll get to whatever you're selling
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or whatever your anecdotes are,
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but just like, how can we make something happen here?
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And I think sort of, you know,
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one of the iconic moments for him was
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he had Danny Minogue on.
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I think it might have even been the first episode.
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And what is it Danny's got to sing her song on.
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This is Kylie Minogue's sister.
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I'm sorry, I'm not giving any of that.
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You got to remember her half-malicious sister in America.
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Yeah, she's a blacensister.
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Yeah.
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And, you know,
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Jason, Jason, Danny, Kylie.
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So, Danny Minogue's performing her new song title, I know.
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And at a certain point, during the song,
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they cut from Danny to Sean,
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watching enough rope with Andrew Denton.
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Watching another.
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Watching another's interview show on a television.
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Like, just commitment to comedy.
9:25
Yes.
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I think my understanding is, of course,
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that then became an issue.
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And Danny's people didn't like that.
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That's it, don't do that, yeah.
9:33
I remember, I mean, that was what I loved about Letterman as well.
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I don't know if it was in the early days of his CBS show.
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You were a cognizant or a live,
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but in the late 90s, he would, he had,
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he was so assertive towards some guests.
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I mean, I just remember little things like,
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there was a supermodel, a South American supermodel
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who was on the show, who was just giving one word answers to everything.
9:58
Yes.
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And he was like, so what are you doing your spare time?
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And she goes, oh, I don't know.
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Yeah.
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I like to eat.
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And he just lets the pause die.
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And let's see what he can start to tear up.
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As he picks up a pen on a piece of paper and starts taking notes.
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And he says, so in addition to being a biological necessity,
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eating is a hobby for you.
10:24
Oh, God.
10:26
Oh, God.
10:27
Yeah.
10:28
No, I think I've seen, say numerous interviews
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that he just hated having to interview,
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yeah, the newest, you know, Star Wars.
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But he didn't hide that, which is what was, which is what was nice.
10:39
So many of them try to make it seem like they're having fun.
10:41
Yes.
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You know, Falon always has to be having fun with everybody.
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It's insufferable.
10:46
Yeah.
10:46
Yeah.
10:47
Letterman lent into the disdain.
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Totally, totally.
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So how did you get into this line of work, young man?
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Um, how did I get into this?
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In fact, why don't you describe your line of work?
10:59
Oh, sure.
11:00
How do you conceive of it?
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Yes, okay.
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Well, so I, at the moment, I do fortnightly satirical sketches
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for ABC's 730 program, which is a current affairs news and current affairs program.
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The flagship current affairs, excuse me.
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The program in Australia.
11:17
Yes.
11:17
It's like doing it for 60 minutes.
11:19
Yeah.
11:19
You're like Australia's Andy Rooney.
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Well, there's a reference for 100 years, young.
11:24
And, um, yeah.
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So once a fortnight, they allow me to soil that program
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with whatever I want to do.
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And it's a program that has a history of, in the past,
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that, you know, John Clark and Brian Dore had a satirical segment there,
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um, for many, many years and, uh,
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they're the ones who did some Americans will even know the classic sketch
11:44
about the boat, the front of the boat fell off.
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Yeah.
11:47
Senator Collins, thanks for coming in.
11:48
It's a great pleasure. Thank you.
11:50
This ship that was involved in the incident off Western Australia this week.
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Yeah, the one the front fell off?
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Yeah.
11:54
Yeah, that's not very typical.
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I'd like to make that point.
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Well, how has it done typical?
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Well, there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time
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and very seldom does anything like this happen.
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I just don't want people thinking that tankers aren't safe.
12:04
Was this tankers safe?
12:05
Well, I was thinking more about the other ones.
12:06
The ones that are safe.
12:07
Yeah, the ones the front doesn't fall off.
12:09
Well, if this wasn't safe, why did it have 80,000 tons of oil on it?
12:12
Well, I'm not saying it wasn't safe.
12:13
It's just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
12:15
Why?
12:16
Well, some of them are built so the front doesn't fall off at all.
12:18
Wasn't this built so the front wouldn't fall off?
12:20
Well, obviously not.
12:21
How do you know?
12:21
Well, because the front fell off and 20,000 tons of crude oil
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spilled into the sea caught fire.
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It's a bit of a giveaway.
12:27
I just like to make the point that that is not normal.
12:29
Well, what sort of standards are these oil tankers built to?
12:31
Oh, very rigorous maritime engineering standards.
12:34
What sort of thing?
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Well, the front's not supposed to fall off for a start.
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And what other things?
12:37
Well, there are regulations governing the materials that they can be made of.
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What materials?
12:41
Well, cardboard's out.
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And?
12:43
No cardboard derivatives.
12:45
Like paper?
12:45
No paper.
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No string, no cellar tape.
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Rubber?
12:48
No, rubbers out.
12:50
They've got to have a steering wheel.
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There's a minimum crew requirement.
12:52
What's the minimum crew?
12:53
Oh, one, I suppose.
12:54
So the allegations that they're just designed to carry as much oil as possible
12:57
and help with the consequences?
12:58
I mean, that's ludicrous.
12:59
Absolutely ludicrous.
13:00
These are very, very strong vessels.
13:02
So what happened in this case?
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Well, the front fell off in this case by all means, but it's very unusual.
13:05
But, Senator Collins, why did the front book fall off?
13:08
Well, a wave hit it.
13:09
A wave hit it?
13:10
A wave hit the ship.
13:12
Is that unusual?
13:12
Oh, yeah.
13:13
It's sea, chance and a million.
13:15
So what do you do to protect the environment in places like this?
13:17
The ship was towed outside the environment.
13:19
Into another environment.
13:21
No, no, no.
13:21
It's been towed beyond the environment.
13:22
It's not in the environment.
13:24
No, but from one environment to another environment.
13:25
No, it's beyond the environment.
13:26
It's not in an environment.
13:28
It's been towed beyond the environment.
13:30
Well, what's out there?
13:30
Nothing's out there.
13:31
There must be something in there.
13:32
There is nothing out there.
13:33
All there is is sea and birds and fish.
13:36
And?
13:36
And 20,000 tons of crude oil.
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And what else?
13:38
And a fire.
13:39
And anything else?
13:40
And the part of the ship that the front fell off.
13:42
But there's nothing else out there.
13:43
Senator Collins, thanks for joining me.
13:44
You're a complete void.
13:45
Yeah.
13:46
We're out of time.
13:47
The environment is perfectly safe.
13:47
We're out of time.
13:48
Yeah.
13:48
Can you book me a cab?
13:50
But didn't you come in a Commonwealth car?
13:51
Yes, I did.
13:52
But what happened?
13:53
No, the front fell off.
13:54
So that's the sketch.
13:56
Yes, so that's what I do now.
13:58
So I've been doing some version of political satire for...
14:01
Oh gosh, about nine years now.
14:03
And have been, you know, quite good for maybe one or two.
14:08
I think you're very good at it.
14:09
And that out, but the, it's a funny thing
14:12
because I could tell, I could hear as you were trying to articulate
14:16
what your job is.
14:18
The difficulty with which people such as us have
14:21
to explain what is we do.
14:22
Because you're like, well, at the moment,
14:24
there's this shwan show that does this thing.
14:27
But like, what do you write on the customs form
14:30
when it asks what your occupation is?
14:31
Exactly, yes.
14:33
Yeah, so I think at the moment I tend to write writer,
14:38
because I've got a book out.
14:39
You know, I've got a book coming out this month,
14:40
so I can sort of, I have written, you know, other things.
14:43
And so, you know, I think primarily that's what I enjoy doing.
14:47
And I sort of perform out of necessity.
14:49
It's really a budget thing.
14:51
It's not that I'm, you know, deliberately imposing myself on audiences.
14:55
Yeah, it is interesting.
14:57
And also writer has more cachet.
15:00
Yes, I think so.
15:00
You know, Clown, where are you saying Clown?
15:02
No, exactly, that's it.
15:03
I once had, I think I might have just told this on the,
15:06
on the podcast, so I beg a big listness to be patient with me,
15:10
but Mark may not have heard it.
15:12
I, when I had a visa to go into the States,
15:15
I had an O1 visa, which is technically called an extraordinary talent.
15:19
Oh, yes, it's extraordinary talent.
15:20
It's for foreign nationals, you know, it's the,
15:22
it's the Russell Crowe visa or the Cape Lanchett visa,
15:25
for sports people, entertainers and scientists,
15:29
who are coming into a particular job.
15:31
And so every time I would come in,
15:32
it's a visa class that I'd see a lot of at the airport.
15:35
And so you'd always get interesting questions or a raised eyebrow
15:39
from the, the dumpling of a man at the customs immigration
15:43
when you're getting off the plane in the States.
15:45
And one time one of them looks at the little O1 and he looks up
15:48
for me and goes, extraordinary talent, huh?
15:53
And we just look at each other and he goes,
15:55
wait a juggle.
16:00
It's a sick no, sir.
16:01
Have you ever had a scary tell him go through customs?
16:03
Have you ever had a moment where you had an offshore
16:05
very much so many, many times because I, yeah, weirdly,
16:10
I made the decision to go to Egypt
16:13
right during the revolution.
16:15
Oh, right.
16:16
And for a holiday, it was not exactly, it's a long story.
16:20
I'm like a travel hacker who uses like tricks
16:24
out the freak of fire programs of airlines.
16:26
Suddenly, suddenly fights are really cheap
16:28
and all these hotels are available.
16:29
I don't know why, I didn't bother to look into it.
16:31
What actually happened was you can buy around the world air fairs
16:36
for a fixed price, which give you like up to 20 flights
16:40
around the world and there are slightly arcane rules
16:42
about where you can go.
16:42
But you can basically go all the way around the world
16:44
for a single flat fair.
16:46
And the business class versions of these air fairs
16:49
are usually something in the range of like $10,000
16:52
or something, so they're quite expensive.
16:53
But comparatively, not that expensive
16:56
when you think about all of the constituent flights
16:58
given how expensive flying in the nose of the plane is.
17:00
I was doing a lot of domestic flying in the States
17:03
and in the States, not so much any more.
17:06
But five or 10 years ago, having top tier status
17:08
was really valuable because they give unlimited domestic upgrades
17:12
to people who are like platinum, you know, status.
17:16
So I wanted to maintain my status,
17:18
which you have to get by flying 100,000 miles in a year.
17:22
So I thought you'd be great if I could
17:24
and you get a whole bunch of the bonus status credit things
17:27
if you're at the front of the plane.
17:28
If you're in business class or first class,
17:30
you'd never get there in economy.
17:31
But if you can fly around the world,
17:33
just one around, once around the world,
17:34
if you kind of make it work,
17:36
so that you're going on really long obscure journeys.
17:40
I feel like you've built your entire life
17:41
about just maintaining status.
17:44
It was all just about making sure
17:45
that I never fell below the status
17:48
where you get the lounge access.
17:50
So anyway, I had this whole thing mapped out.
17:53
Like if I go to, if I use one of the domestic trips
17:55
to go to Alaska, then that's a long way.
17:58
So then I'll get my status.
17:59
So I had it all mapped out.
18:00
I was like, now I just have to find a jurisdiction in the world
18:03
where the, where the round the world airfare
18:06
is priced disproportionately cheaply.
18:08
In other words, somewhere where the currency has just collapsed.
18:12
So I can like parlay the international currency arbitrage
18:18
in my favor.
18:20
So the Egyptian pound had fallen through the floor.
18:24
I was like, this is what I'll do.
18:26
I'll just use some miles to go to Cairo
18:29
and I'll start the trip there
18:31
buying my ingenious round the world.
18:34
Business class flight on Cairo.
18:40
So I went there.
18:41
I spent a night in Cairo.
18:42
I almost got kidnapped by his Lamas Tintafu Square
18:46
seriously.
18:46
It was one of the most frightening experiences in my life.
18:48
I was already a better answer than I was anticipated.
18:51
This is a hero now.
18:53
I got rescued by a young bilingual student
18:56
who translated between me and the Islamist
18:59
who were not letting me leave the throne in the square.
19:01
There were military aircraft flying overhead
19:03
with the Egyptian like colors being sprayed out the back.
19:06
That was just to maintain the status points.
19:08
That was a jealous.
19:09
I was like, wow out there!
19:11
How do you get on those planes?
19:13
I bet those lounges are ace.
19:15
And so then the young student who was rescuing me
19:19
was like, the gentleman is asking you to come with him
19:21
but I frankly, if I were you and your shoes,
19:24
I would be delighted to claim his offer.
19:26
So I did.
19:26
And he took me back to his hotel
19:28
and the next day I flew out.
19:30
When I arrived back in the States
19:33
for the subsequent three or four years,
19:36
I never didn't get put into secondary
19:38
screening every single time I came.
19:40
Oh, interesting.
19:41
Yeah, right.
19:42
So always took at least three to four hours
19:45
of sitting in a room,
19:46
waiting for them to do all kinds of background checks
19:48
and then grilling me about this and grilling me about this.
19:51
Okay, you're on the list.
19:52
Yeah, on the list.
19:54
So that one way I've been...
19:57
Man, but the lounges were great.
19:58
The lounges were great.
19:59
The lounges!
20:00
I got to tell you.
20:02
Yeah, there's this little lasterous next to the thing
20:04
about the lounges access.
20:05
It's a tiny thing.
20:07
Please note.
20:09
Okay, so you got into...
20:10
and you got into political satter in the first place
20:12
by doing what?
20:13
Well, I was interning on a daily news comedy show
20:17
that had just sort of started out.
20:18
It was a two-minute show.
20:19
I mean, this isn't even a thing,
20:20
a two-minute show,
20:21
but it was on ABC2 comedy channel.
20:23
And I think it aired at 7.28 or something.
20:26
I mean, it was just ahead of its time
20:27
because everything's two minutes.
20:28
It's the kids with their Twitch and their TikToks.
20:31
That's right.
20:31
You were ahead of time.
20:32
It seemed like it was ridiculous.
20:34
And so we were doing that.
20:36
And so I was just interning on that.
20:37
And I just sort of kept interning
20:38
until they put me on the payroll.
20:40
And at first that show was sort of like,
20:43
oh, what's funny in the news today?
20:45
You know, we only got two minutes.
20:46
Like, oh, Justin Bieber does something ridiculous.
20:48
Or, oh, this new song, you know, Gangnam style.
20:51
Let's do something about that.
20:53
But over time, as you're reading the newspaper
20:55
every single day, you start going,
20:57
oh, this is quite important things going on.
21:00
And some of these things feel like they're perhaps more worthy
21:03
of being a lampoon than, you know,
21:06
the latest pop sensation from Korea.
21:09
So it was over time just like,
21:12
you just naturally start to become
21:14
fairly well informed, I would say.
21:17
And had you been a news junkie?
21:18
Not in your hands?
21:19
Not even close.
21:21
Not even close.
21:22
I had no, and I had no interest in politics.
21:24
You seem like the sort of guy who was.
21:26
Yeah, well, I'm glad I give that impression.
21:28
Yeah, I put a lot of work into that.
21:30
But the, no, I had no interest in it.
21:33
The story I always tell is that my parents were
21:35
politically, they're on, you know,
21:36
opposite sides of the spectrum.
21:38
I don't mean far, which was far right.
21:39
I just mean like, you know,
21:41
like, like, just more like more like,
21:42
more like one, like, one more, one more progressive,
21:45
one more.
21:46
When you said opposite ends of the spectrum,
21:48
I literally, I like in my brain,
21:49
there was like someone in it with a swastika on band
21:53
doing good stepping.
21:54
And then another with a communist,
21:56
a cartoon communist design.
21:58
That's true. Yeah.
21:59
A box some wench harvesting grain.
22:02
Yeah, actually, that reminds me though.
22:03
I have an idea.
22:04
No, actually, I have an idea.
22:07
This is the one show that I could discuss it on.
22:09
But will I do it?
22:10
Yeah, but yeah, let's narrow that spectrum.
22:12
No, no, no, go with that idea.
22:14
I've got this idea.
22:15
I think this is, I think it's a city,
22:17
I think it's a satirical idea.
22:18
Yeah.
22:19
I think this shit, I wonder if there's something
22:21
that there's an app in the style of Tinder.
22:24
I haven't given a name yet,
22:25
but for argument's sake, we'll call it.
22:27
Blinder.
22:27
We'll call it, we're in Jason's name.
22:29
We'll call it hatefucker.
22:30
And basically, it's you put in your political stance.
22:35
And then they match you up with people
22:37
on the opposite end of the spectrum.
22:40
Because I think those people would like
22:41
to hate fuck each other.
22:42
Yes.
22:42
You know, it's just like, you know what?
22:44
You're gorgeous.
22:45
You're hot.
22:46
What have you?
22:46
I hate everything about what you believe.
22:48
I love this.
22:49
Let's get it on.
22:49
I think it's actually something.
22:51
The vegan and the hunter.
22:52
Yeah.
22:52
Can you imagine?
22:53
Sure.
22:53
Exactly.
22:54
It doesn't have to be political.
22:55
It's cultural.
22:56
That's it.
22:57
Yes.
22:57
The woke, I mean, don't get us started on
22:59
trans issues and the transphobes.
23:01
So sometimes, no, often that's the thing.
23:04
Is that open?
23:04
Yes.
23:05
And like, you know,
23:06
if I was a gay people who were super,
23:07
who were super homophobic,
23:09
the pastor.
23:10
Right.
23:10
Yep.
23:11
Sure.
23:11
You know, and the gay Māori grā,
23:13
the guy who rides the drone inflatable caulk
23:16
down Oxford Street in the Māori grā.
23:17
Go for it.
23:18
Don't call this uncomfortable conversation
23:20
for nothing.
23:20
I can see you squirming already.
23:21
Yeah.
23:23
No.
23:23
He said kākā.
23:25
I can't get away with this.
23:27
It's 7-58 in the evening.
23:30
So yeah, that's my that's my pitch.
23:33
I should yeah.
23:34
Part of me thinks it actually is a good idea.
23:35
It actually is a good idea.
23:37
Because isn't, I mean, I think a lot of,
23:39
it opposites a track, isn't it?
23:41
Royal animal sex is that.
23:43
Right.
23:43
It's just that we don't factor that in.
23:45
Or maybe the geniuses that the match.com do
23:48
and we don't know about it.
23:49
The idea, I got the idea from George,
23:51
they didn't give it to me.
23:53
Yes.
23:53
I didn't speak to him.
23:54
It was inspired by George and Kelly and Conway.
23:56
Is that because I would see people say,
23:58
man, they must have amazing sex.
24:00
It must be, that must be what it is.
24:02
Because like clearly,
24:03
he's out during the Trump administration.
24:05
He was up there on Twitter, bashing Trump every single day.
24:07
And every day, she's got to go out there
24:09
and say, everything's healthy.
24:10
I just assumed they lived in different houses.
24:12
Yeah, different beds.
24:14
But this is a nice.
24:14
But I like the idea that actually,
24:16
they're really actually quite rocks.
24:17
Yeah.
24:18
I like it.
24:20
And having amazing sex.
24:21
So that's, that's, that's, thank you.
24:22
Yeah, that George and Kelly had to have inspired this.
24:24
I'm not sure I wanted the image of George and Kelly and having sex.
24:27
Oh, it's beautiful.
24:29
It's beautiful.
24:29
It's her way.
24:30
It's not too much.
24:32
So you had this two-minute program.
24:34
And now I know you run hate fucker, right?
24:36
Yeah, that's exactly.
24:38
Is it lucrative to hate fucker app?
24:40
How do you monetize it?
24:42
How do you monetize it?
24:42
How do you monetize it?
24:43
So anyway, so we did the two-minute program.
24:46
That then expanded to a massive 10 minutes a night.
24:49
Yeah.
24:50
And what was this program called?
24:51
It's called The Rose.
24:52
This The Rose, right.
24:54
And anyway, so did a 10-minute version of that for a couple of years.
24:57
And within that time, I then sort of carved out a niche.
25:00
I had a little sort of rapid-fire headlines segment
25:04
at the top of the show, which is very much inspired
25:05
by Norman Donald, because I really felt like,
25:08
oh, it'd be nice.
25:08
Because we're trying to do big stories and deep dimes
25:11
in the way that you would see.
25:12
I guess now you would see them like last week
25:14
to not be done all over or whatever.
25:15
But I sort of felt like, is there a way
25:17
that we can just do short stories
25:18
where it's just bam, bam, joke, joke, joke, you know?
25:21
Face set up, punchline or whatever.
25:22
When Norm was doing the weekend update.
25:24
Exactly.
25:25
That's it.
25:26
And because the show was so short,
25:28
just kind of doing it a kind of rapid-fire.
25:30
It's like, a prime minister of Tony Abbott today
25:32
has announced something and that kind of thing.
25:33
And it sort of developed a little tiny bit of a reputation.
25:38
And then the show ended.
25:39
And then the Guardian picked that segment up
25:42
for a series of web videos.
25:44
And then after that, the feed at SBS called me up
25:47
said, I do want to come and do, you know,
25:48
you stick over here.
25:50
And then it sort of evolved into doing,
25:52
yeah, satirical kind of sketches.
25:54
Did that for a couple of years.
25:55
And then eventually got asked whether I'd like to join 730.
25:59
So I've, but yeah, so it's been about nine years
26:01
that I've, that's sort of, that's through line
26:04
of political comedy.
26:05
And this is a stupid question
26:07
because I always hate it when people ask me.
26:08
But where do you get your ideas from?
26:10
Like, I mean, I remember when I,
26:12
it's my first job as some listeners will know
26:14
was doing satire and political comedy
26:16
on my Carlton's show on to UE.
26:18
When the chaser left there and they got their ABC TV show,
26:23
they had been mentors slash idols of mine,
26:26
a sort of half generation older than me at uni.
26:30
And so I then slipped in and like pitched myself to Carlton
26:34
because I knew that they were leaving.
26:36
And I did a good John Howard.
26:38
And that was about enough of my Carlton at the time.
26:40
That's all you needed.
26:41
That was all you needed was a good John Howard impression.
26:44
And eventually worked up a bunch of different voices.
26:48
But the writing of this, like,
26:50
it's quite hard to not make satire obvious
26:54
because everyone's got their initial satirical take
26:57
on any public figure.
27:00
Yes.
27:00
And so I would inhale a lot of like letters to the editor,
27:05
a lot of editorial cartoons, a lot of op-ed articles
27:10
to try to piece together like, what is the actual,
27:12
what is the kernel of hypocrisy that is interesting
27:15
to attack this week or today?
27:18
Yes.
27:18
And then, as I'm going at it,
27:20
how do I not make the audience know what's coming?
27:23
Sure.
27:24
A split second before it's about to land.
27:25
Yeah.
27:26
And then make it something that's interesting.
27:27
What the, what the improv people in New York
27:30
would call going from A to D instead of from A to B?
27:33
Right.
27:34
Sure.
27:34
Do you, yeah.
27:35
Well, I mean, just quickly, so Charles Firth,
27:38
the founder of the Jayzer, he, he created the roast.
27:41
So that was my son.
27:43
So I've done a lot of stuff with Charles.
27:45
Since we are both children.
27:47
We're children of Charles.
27:49
That's, that'll be the telling me, the name of the telling movie.
27:52
Yeah, you've seen children of the corn.
27:53
Yes, this is children of Charles.
27:55
And so how do I, how do I, where do I, ideas come from?
28:01
I mean, obviously, yes, consuming a lot of news,
28:03
which is something also that when, when we're not on air,
28:05
I, I said, immediately stopped doing it.
28:07
I don't know if you are.
28:08
Yeah, I do as well.
28:09
No, I turn off.
28:10
I, I, but I think largely that's because of social media.
28:13
Before social media, I read the newspaper every day.
28:16
Right.
28:16
Consumed news.
28:17
Now it's so fast.
28:19
Yes, that I've pulled back when I'm not on the air.
28:21
That's it.
28:22
And I take the attitude of, if it's not important enough
28:25
to be in the economist or the weekend papers,
28:28
I don't need to worry about it.
28:29
Yes.
28:29
Well, I mean, this is something we may end up getting onto,
28:32
but like, yeah, this, this, this,
28:32
because, yeah, Twitter's a big part of my life.
28:34
And it's a big sort of reason for me being doing this work
28:38
that I'm doing now is that I've had success.
28:41
My sketches have done well on Twitter.
28:43
And that's, that's helped me build an audience.
28:45
But Twitter is a simple thing.
28:46
It's been the best thing for my career
28:48
and the worst thing for my mental health.
28:50
Yeah.
28:50
And one of the things I can't stand
28:52
and part of the reason that I switch off
28:53
when I don't need to watch it
28:55
is that there seems to have been a culture has developed
28:57
where a lot of people feel like they need to weigh in
29:01
on whatever the story of the day is.
29:04
There's this sort of something will come up
29:05
and suddenly everyone has a take on it.
29:07
No, I'm not saying they shouldn't.
29:09
I'm just saying it's a lot to take in.
29:11
Of suddenly, an example last week,
29:13
I'm sorry, I'm taking this on a side tangent
29:15
or eventually I'll see your question.
29:17
No, this is the whole point of the show.
29:18
This show is entirely side tangent.
29:21
But like there was a thing last week
29:22
where there was this thing about the Australia club.
29:26
I think it's a men's only club,
29:28
some sort of elite thing.
29:29
I'd never heard of it.
29:32
And then suddenly they were having a vote
29:33
to decide whether or not they should let women enter.
29:36
And it was a funny thing where suddenly
29:39
the vote failed, fortunately.
29:40
In case any listeners are worried that there were ladies
29:44
dragging their malodeurus.
29:47
And it's a sort of thing.
29:49
And it's a weird thing where like,
29:50
I sort of think,
29:52
oh, I'm in suddenly,
29:52
it seems a bit okay.
29:54
And so I sort of went,
29:56
oh, I'm sure they'll vote to allow women in.
29:59
But it was, and then of course they didn't.
30:02
But it was the thing where suddenly
30:03
everyone had an opinion on this thing.
30:05
But a day earlier, I'd never heard of.
30:07
And I think I don't want to live like that.
30:11
I don't want to suddenly go from no awareness of something
30:16
to too much awareness of something.
30:19
And that too much awareness suddenly gives it a weight
30:22
that I'm not sure it deserves.
30:24
Yeah.
30:25
And so, and like the day before that,
30:27
you know, Peter Kredlin,
30:28
who had been the chief of staff to Tony Abbott,
30:30
she was awarded an order of Australia,
30:32
which I don't know what an American equivalent
30:34
of an order of Australia.
30:35
Presidential medal of freedom maybe.
30:37
Something like that maybe.
30:38
And so, but they had a lot of these.
30:40
And it's what used to be a knighthood kind of.
30:44
Well, no, that's the highest level.
30:46
A.M. is probably what a knight was.
30:48
Right.
30:49
And so, anyway, she receives this award,
30:51
along with a bunch of other people.
30:53
And that's then the story of the day,
30:55
because she's not, you know,
30:56
she's not popular, certainly, in progressive circles.
30:59
And I just like, even though, you know,
31:01
if I were on the board, I'd probably, you know,
31:04
she's not the first name that comes to mind of who I would.
31:07
Yeah.
31:08
But these people get nominated as well.
31:10
That's the thing that I always understand
31:11
about people getting angry,
31:13
about people getting awards.
31:14
Like somebody nominate,
31:15
somebody from the community,
31:16
and admittedly, it might be her cat.
31:19
We don't know who does the nominating.
31:20
It could be, you know, someone who's totally partisan.
31:23
But nonetheless, the person gets nominated.
31:25
And then your job as the person
31:27
who's deciding whether or not to give the award is,
31:29
are the criteria fulfilled?
31:31
Yes.
31:31
Like it has this person made a contribution.
31:34
And just because you don't like the person's politics,
31:36
doesn't mean that they didn't make a contribution
31:38
to public life.
31:39
Yes.
31:39
You know, he's actually sort of don't get about people
31:41
getting angry, about people receiving awards,
31:43
just because they came from the wrong party.
31:45
Yeah.
31:45
So, and I, so I kind of, you know,
31:48
like I say, I wouldn't have given her an award,
31:50
but I bet she may have,
31:51
but maybe you would have a nomination.
31:53
Maybe I would have crossed your day.
31:54
And you looked at the criteria and you'd gone,
31:56
has this person, I wouldn't have nominated.
31:58
I think I would have nominated.
31:59
Anyway, so, but suddenly, you know,
32:02
then that unleashes, you know,
32:04
thousands of tweets.
32:06
And it's a weird thing where even though I might instinctively go,
32:09
oh, yeah, I'm not sure if that's someone I would put forward.
32:13
Suddenly, I now hear thousands of people echoing
32:17
some version of my own sentiment,
32:19
but then actually sometimes maybe even being much more
32:21
vitriolic.
32:22
And I'm now going, I don't know if I feel that way anymore.
32:24
No, I'm just kidding.
32:26
Yes, now that you've articulated my position,
32:28
it's like an obnoxious way.
32:30
I'm going to retreat from it.
32:31
I'm sorry.
32:31
I feel that all the time.
32:32
I'm going to feel that about all political persuasions
32:35
and all thought movements.
32:37
I think that's something I find heartbreaking sometimes,
32:39
is I'll see something where I go.
32:40
I absolutely agree with what you've just said.
32:42
I think you've articulated that in the worst possible way
32:46
and have actually damaged the movement by doing it.
32:49
Did you see that piece about like the sort of woke
32:52
sensorious finger wagging left about how,
32:55
like how insufferable they are even to people on the left?
32:57
And I'm trying to remember what the catch was.
32:59
Anyway, I'll insert it or something.
33:01
Who is to blame for making neo-narts?
33:03
He's looked at the new rock and roll punk.
33:05
And the answer is, unfortunately, partly us.
33:09
Don't get me wrong, I love left-wing values
33:11
and hope that one day they'll win out across the globe.
33:13
It's just that on that day,
33:15
I don't want any actual left-wing people
33:16
to be alive to see it happen.
33:19
Why?
33:19
Because we're fucking useless.
33:21
I mean, first of all, Brexit.
33:22
What the fuck happened there?
33:24
Well, the left employed a cunning two-prong strategy
33:28
by one, calling every leave voter a racist,
33:32
and two, failing to put forward a positive case for a man.
33:38
Right, we'd how not engaging 17 million Brits
33:41
and slacking them off instead didn't win them over,
33:44
but at least yelling,
33:44
RACES!
33:46
Online made us feel good about ourselves
33:48
and had no bad long-lasting side effects.
33:50
The UK has voted to leave the European Union.
33:53
Ah, shit.
33:54
Well, don't worry, after Brexit, we learned our lesson.
33:58
And then the US election came along with thought,
33:59
now, let's just do that again.
34:01
You could put half of Trump supporters
34:04
into what I call the basket of deplorables.
34:06
Not surprisingly, the left campaign of vote
34:08
for us, you pieces of shit, didn't pan out so well.
34:11
I don't know what I said, ah!
34:13
But don't worry, it's not just the big battles.
34:16
The left are totally useless on a small scale as well.
34:18
This is largely thanks to the foul brick of nightmares
34:21
we all have sewn into our hands,
34:23
which means we're also bleeding woe call the time
34:26
that we find something new to be offended
34:28
by every few seconds.
34:30
Just for example, the movie Dunkirk is sexist
34:32
using the word wife as offensive.
34:34
This cute kid has a massive racist.
34:36
Doctor saying you wait isn't healthy as fat-shaming.
34:38
Halloween costumes are a microaggression
34:40
marked Twain as racist.
34:41
In fairness, he is 183 years old.
34:43
We should have seen it coming
34:44
and practicing yoga as cultural genocide.
34:47
Again, not quite the big picture issues
34:49
the left used to be famous for.
34:50
That was Jazz Twemlo, a brilliant lefty comic
34:54
in a sketch he did for the final week of the ABC comedy program
34:57
tonight with Tom Voward.
34:59
Can't you just make the same points without being a dick?
35:03
Yeah, and like you say, I think it's all sides.
35:05
I think it happens both ways.
35:07
So I think that's what I,
35:10
that's my struggle is Twitter is just,
35:13
I've always thought that,
35:14
ideally, there'd be some sort of a cap
35:16
sort of saying, all right, the big topic today
35:18
is Peter Kredner has been awarded in order of Australia.
35:20
We're taking 20 tweets on this and that's it.
35:23
Yeah, that's all.
35:24
And if your point has already been made,
35:26
you can't, unless you've got a radical new take,
35:29
we're going to go with one of the 20 tweets that exists.
35:31
So would it be a first-come-first search on 20 tweets?
35:34
So we're going to get some quality control.
35:36
I get, again, I guess just like in the Humphrey's dictatorship.
35:39
Yeah, exactly.
35:40
Just like in Australia, you'd have to nominate,
35:42
some of the nominate tweets will be a whole thing.
35:44
They're actually, that does already exist.
35:46
It's called the op-ed pages of a newspaper.
35:48
Right, yes, you're hopeless.
35:50
Where there's an editorial control
35:52
over who gets to have their opinion in it.
35:53
So anyway, I now have to walk back my comments.
35:56
It's obviously I want to encourage everyone to be engaged
36:00
and to make a contribution.
36:01
No, you don't have to pretend.
36:02
That's my, you don't have to pen into my audience.
36:05
But I have mature enough listeners to understand
36:08
that we sometimes don't want to hear from.
36:09
But it's more just like, and maybe I just need to work out
36:13
how to use the platform differently.
36:15
No, the platform's broken and your criticisms are completely
36:18
not in it.
36:20
No, we were not built to have performative opinions
36:25
constantly sort of policed or applauded by our peers
36:29
in real time in the aggregate.
36:31
Like this is an insane way to be communicating with each other.
36:34
Yeah, so, but you know, that said, you know,
36:36
but I will, I say, but I will also, also obviously,
36:39
I'm someone who's fortunate enough to get to have a large platform
36:43
to put together some sort of some version of my take on things.
36:46
So, you know, that's, you know, I don't want to be discouraging people
36:51
from having their take on things.
36:52
But it's, I think sometimes it's the things that seem to me
36:55
relatively small that suddenly seem big by this sheer sort of,
37:00
I suppose, I don't know, boredom of Twitter.
37:02
Do you think you're a contrarian by nature?
37:05
No, I don't, I don't.
37:06
Like when you see, is it that you see the herd stampeding
37:09
in one direction and therefore you feel the need to go
37:11
in another direction?
37:12
I don't think so much that I feel the need to go
37:14
in the other direction, but just maybe, maybe, maybe,
37:17
maybe I feel slightly anxious when I see it all going all in.
37:21
Yeah, I don't know if I'd go completely the other way,
37:22
but I probably just step back.
37:24
Right, step to the side a little bit.
37:26
And I just don't participate.
37:28
I mean, occasionally if I feel like I've got some, you know,
37:32
clever observation to make, but a lot of the time I'll just observe
37:36
because I just think it's a more noise.
37:38
But it's also kind of fruitless to actually participate.
37:41
In my experience, maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just too much
37:44
of a shitster, but if I'm going to communicate in any way
37:48
that isn't going to get me into more trouble than it's worth,
37:51
then I'm going to be saying something that other people have said.
37:54
It's a fairly predictable thing to say.
37:55
So I might as well not say the thing that's not going to get me into trouble.
37:58
And if I'm going to say the thing that's going to get me into trouble,
38:00
then why bother?
38:01
Yes, I mean, maybe that's what it should be.
38:03
Is that, ideally, the algorithm would be so clever
38:06
that you tweet something and before it, this is the way it's,
38:09
just as it might be a little warning, because I think there's now,
38:11
if you want to share a news article, it might say,
38:14
hey, just check, you know, have you read the article before it says,
38:19
would you like to read the article before you tweet it, your fuckhead?
38:22
But I'd love the algorithm to develop to a point where it can actually detect
38:26
how many other people have articulated this point of view.
38:29
And just maybe go, would you like to retweet that person?
38:32
Yes, that's good.
38:34
Your point has been made by 143 million,
38:38
622,502 people on whom 32% made it better than you.
38:44
Yeah, so that's that's the weird thing.
38:46
Because obviously, like, because in terms of like a movement or in terms of
38:49
people en masse opposing something that's actually quite powerful to suddenly see
38:54
if you're in your timeline, bam, bam, bam, all these people, you know,
38:57
coming out against something.
38:58
But I think it's when it's the thing that to me, to me at least seems relatively
39:01
trivial, like an award in that case.
39:04
But even if it's been, does that like, does that change the equation?
39:08
I think it's in it's, I don't want to equate it to marching,
39:11
but it's just sort of, it's almost like a digital march.
39:14
If suddenly you see person after person speaking out against something,
39:18
maybe for instance, like the Billa Wheeler family, I think that's something
39:22
that's been, you know, quite useful.
39:24
Do you want to explain that?
39:24
Oh, sure.
39:25
So this is a Tamil family from Sri Lanka who had come to Australia and then had,
39:32
so a husband and wife, they then had to, they came here, I'm not fully across the whole.
39:38
I mean, they came here illegally by boat and then as a result of Australia's harsh
39:43
treatment of people who arrive illegally by boat.
39:45
Well, it's not illegal if you're a genuine refugee, I shouldn't say that.
39:48
They came in an undocumented fashion by boat and then they've been
39:52
languishing, rotting on a death of Ireland that we sent them to, I believe,
39:55
on Christmas Island, for several years now.
39:58
And one of the daughters got sick and so she had to come to the mainland
40:03
for medical evacuation, but it took too long and the government was dragging its
40:07
feet and they were regarded as being overly harsh.
40:11
And this all feeds into the general Australian soul-searching
40:15
about how cruelly we treat people who arrive by boat.
40:18
Yes, and so the family have now been reunited, but they're in
40:22
Perth, so they're kind of on the Australian mainland,
40:24
but they're still in community detention.
40:26
They can't go back to the community that wants them back.
40:30
So it's still, that's an ongoing thing.
40:32
But I guess what I'm trying to say is I probably saw about as many tweets
40:36
about that as I did about Peter Kredlin.
40:38
And that's what I think is, that's where I kind of go.
40:41
I don't know how we kind of modify that, because clearly the
40:44
welfare of this family is infinitely more important than a certificate
40:50
that Tony Abbott's former chief has done.
40:52
Oh, it's not just a certificate.
40:53
She gets a little broke as well.
40:55
Oh, okay, all right.
40:56
The pin on her lapel.
40:57
Right, okay.
40:58
And then she gets a little sell of the century pin and other pin
41:01
and also for the prizes.
41:03
But yeah, so that's where, that's what I guess that's what I'm
41:07
trying to say is that I think Twitter sometimes ends up with a
41:10
situation where things that are not equal of importance
41:15
almost appear to be by the sheer quantity of discussions around.
41:18
Also, don't people posture and pretend to care about things more
41:21
than they actually care about them?
41:23
I mean, isn't that you're reminding me a little bit?
41:25
I saw recently a clip of Jordan Peterson on Q and A a few years ago,
41:29
where a young girl asked him whether or not he,
41:34
how he can defend his attitude, his advice to young people to
41:38
clean their rooms and get their own house in order before they
41:40
start taking on big global issues because of their pressing global
41:44
issues that need our attention right now, like climate change.
41:46
And his response was basically that generally people,
41:51
there's a lot that people are running from about themselves.
41:54
And there's a lot that we don't want to deal with in our real lives.
41:58
And a logical psychological response to that is to grasp for
42:01
grand missions that we can accomplish where we can
42:04
rest ourselves as the hero of our own story.
42:08
And instead of doing the grind and the shit of cleaning up our own
42:13
messes in our own locality, we can we can make ourselves feel good about
42:16
ourselves and look good to our neighbors and family
42:19
by taking on big issues.
42:20
And I wonder whether social media isn't just becoming a forum
42:24
for that as well.
42:25
So everything becomes a big noble cause for you to score a virtue
42:29
point about whether it's Peter Kredler or whether it's the
42:32
Bellowella family, it doesn't really matter.
42:35
It's an opportunity for you to not have to clean your room.
42:38
My experience has been that people can do a tremendous amount of good for
42:42
themselves and for the people who are immediately around them by
42:46
looking to their own inadequacies and their own flaws and the things
42:50
that they're not doing in their lives and starting to build
42:53
themselves up as more powerful individuals.
42:55
And if they're capable of doing that,
42:57
then they're capable of expanding their career.
43:00
And if they're capable of expanding their career and their
43:02
competence, then they're capable of taking their place
43:05
in the community as effective leaders.
43:07
And then they're capable of making wise decision instead of
43:10
unwise decisions when it comes to making collective
43:13
political decisions, not suggesting, in the least, and have never
43:16
suggested that there's no domain for social action.
43:20
I'm suggesting that people who don't have their own houses in order
43:23
should be very careful before they go about reorganizing the world,
43:27
which happens in many ways.
43:29
So how are you going to just guess?
43:32
Can I just, if a young person believes that the
43:39
climate, the global warming problem on the climate,
43:42
is something that needs to be tackled quickly.
43:45
And they can't wait until they grow up and become prime ministers to do it.
43:49
Do you think collective responsibility overrides individual
43:52
responsibility in a huge issue like that?
43:55
No.
43:57
OK.
43:59
I do.
44:01
I think the generally, I think the generally, I think the generally
44:06
people, I think generally people have things that are more within their personal
44:10
purview that are more difficult to deal with and that they're
44:13
avoiding and that generally the way they avoid them is by
44:16
adopting pseudo-moralistic stances on large-scale social issues so that they
44:21
look good to their friends and their neighbors.
44:23
That's what I'm going to talk about.
44:27
So when I see all these tweets, I should imagine that person's room must be
44:31
so terrible.
44:32
Oh my gosh.
44:33
Yeah, only they would devote that energy to something in their immediate vicinity.
44:39
Do you find that it's distracting you from things that you'd be better off
44:42
doing social media?
44:43
I think I've, I think I've gotten better.
44:47
Do you have the app on your phone?
44:48
I do.
44:49
Did you ever get rid of it?
44:50
I did.
44:51
I've had periods where it was there and wasn't there.
44:54
Absolutely.
44:54
It's good not having it there.
44:55
It's good having to go to a computer and type in
44:58
www.twitter.com.
45:00
That's right.
45:01
Yeah, so, you know, and I'm quite envious of people who tell me
45:05
they deleted the app or
45:09
but the way I justify it to myself is that I do think I need
45:13
for work.
45:13
I do need to be aware of what the conversation is.
45:16
I think it's useful to see what at least some of the sentiment is
45:20
around certain issues and what is an issue that,
45:23
you know, people are interested in because
45:26
I've also got to be appealing to, you know,
45:29
because sometimes I've, well, this isn't actually,
45:32
I'm back and tracking on this now.
45:34
One of the interesting challenges I have sometimes,
45:37
so maybe it's not interesting at all.
45:38
Interesting to me.
45:39
I'll be the judge of that.
45:41
Yeah, I have my gavel at the ready.
45:43
Well, like, do you, you know, do you want to do a piece of
45:46
comedy about something that everyone's talking about
45:49
so that you're kind of tapping into that conversation
45:51
or do you want to highlight something that you think is worth
45:56
satirizing but isn't really being talked about and you,
45:59
and sometimes you, and you'll see in the response,
46:01
you'll see in the, maybe it's a reflection of the quality
46:04
of what I've made, but just, sometimes it's just like,
46:06
there's, you know, there's going to be a less,
46:08
there's going to be a muted response to me talking about
46:14
secret trials involving witness cases,
46:16
the whole thing for international audiences will mean nothing,
46:18
might even mean nothing to Australian audiences.
46:21
But like that, that's a story that is still kind of,
46:25
I don't know if it's on the fringes, but it's certainly,
46:27
I would say it's a police overreach,
46:29
secrecy of the Australian government.
46:31
Exactly.
46:32
I would say it's not really a mainstream story,
46:34
and so it's something that's, yeah,
46:37
not everyone is talking about,
46:38
no, everyone has a clear sort of take on.
46:40
And so...
46:41
Well, there the difficulty is that you have to explain
46:43
the story in the satire, which is really hard.
46:46
That's a really good point.
46:48
That's because ideally, I deal sketch is something where
46:50
everyone already knows what you're talking about.
46:52
Yeah, there's no background.
46:53
There's no background.
46:54
Because I mentioned John Stuart earlier,
46:56
and that was one of the revolutionary things
46:57
about what he did to the Daily Show, I think,
46:59
which is within the pre-John Stuart Daily Show
47:03
with Craig Killborn was gags and punchlines
47:07
mostly about the Kardashians or whoever was the equivalent
47:10
in the late 90s.
47:12
And then John Stuart started actually describing the news
47:15
and explaining the news and through the course
47:18
of explaining what you needed to know about the news.
47:20
He would also insert jokes about it.
47:22
And then bring you to us how to spying.
47:24
Yeah, exactly.
47:26
And he had the time to do that.
47:27
I have, because I have...
47:28
And the 25 writers.
47:29
Yes, that's it.
47:30
Because I've got...
47:30
Do you have 22, right?
47:32
That's right.
47:32
22.
47:33
So I've got...
47:34
So I write with a guy named Evan Williams,
47:36
and we've been running together for years.
47:38
So it's the two of us,
47:38
and yeah, we've got two to three minutes,
47:40
once a fortnight.
47:41
So we get one swing,
47:42
you know, once a fortnight.
47:43
We've got to choose one topic, once a fortnight.
47:46
And yeah, ideally, the less time that we can
47:48
spend explaining what the story is,
47:51
means, you know, the more time for the actual jokes.
47:53
So something like witness K is something
47:55
that we did do a sketch about,
47:56
but it was difficult trying to convey.
47:58
Also, it's also difficult to...
47:59
Was the sketch any good?
48:00
Well, I mean, I don't...
48:02
Maybe not, but that's...
48:04
I mean, that's part of it.
48:05
That's what, like I said, maybe the sketch wasn't...
48:07
wasn't particularly fantastic,
48:08
but I know one of the challenges for us making it
48:10
was that not all the information is out there
48:13
in both senses.
48:14
Both people aren't aware of it.
48:16
Then it's not a mainstream story,
48:17
and also there's a lot of secrecy around the story itself.
48:19
Yeah, right.
48:20
So some of the details are not clear,
48:21
you know, the fact that we even call them witness K.
48:23
Yeah.
48:24
But, you know,
48:25
um, you know, they're not lighting up Instagram,
48:28
this person.
48:28
No, that's wrong.
48:29
Well, they may be.
48:30
We just don't know who they are.
48:31
We just don't know who they are.
48:32
So that's sort of something where it's like,
48:34
now that's to me, that felt like something
48:36
that was worth talking about,
48:38
but how quickly can you convey that?
48:40
I think once you...
48:41
All right, does everyone understand the story?
48:43
Okay, that was 30 seconds to explain it.
48:44
All right, now here's something funny about it.
48:46
I mean, that's right.
48:48
Get ready to giggle.
48:50
But I reckon there's a third category of sketch, isn't there?
48:53
There's not just the one that everybody knows about,
48:56
all the other people don't know about.
48:58
There's doing the story that people know about
49:00
in a way that they would never predict
49:02
that you were going to do it.
49:03
Yes, sure.
49:04
Which is because like,
49:07
there's nothing lazier or more annoying
49:09
than knowing exactly where the gag or the take is going to go
49:13
and then pandering to the audience all the way
49:16
and delivering them exactly
49:18
what they wanted.
49:19
Yes.
49:20
Yeah, I'm trying to think of specific examples.
49:22
I know there have been things that have come up
49:23
where there's been a quite...
49:25
Yeah, it's been quite an obvious way
49:28
that you could send something up
49:29
and people might even tweet it at me.
49:31
They might even...
49:31
That's the thing.
49:32
If I see someone...
49:34
By the time people are suggesting
49:35
you're suggesting they'll sketch us to you on Twitter.
49:38
That's it.
49:38
I mean, that's sort of...
49:39
That's one of the things.
49:40
Like, if I see that someone's tweeted that idea,
49:43
I can't think of it in good conscience go and make that thing.
49:47
So, I don't want to be doing something
49:50
that I know has already been thought up by someone else.
49:53
So, you know, like, an example of the...
49:56
This is a weird example.
49:58
So, there's a guy named Barnaby Joyce
49:59
who is now the deputy prime minister of Australia.
50:02
He had previously been in this position
50:04
but had been sort of brought down
50:06
through a series of scandals.
50:09
Anyways, back in the role now.
50:11
And I, for years now, have been doing a character
50:14
sort of loosely inspired by him.
50:16
Because part of his scandal
50:18
was that he had impregnated his staff.
50:21
He was married.
50:22
He then impregnated his staffer.
50:26
I love the use of the term impregnated here.
50:27
Yeah.
50:28
There's a factor staffer.
50:30
I forgot one.
50:31
And got it pregnant.
50:32
That was sure.
50:32
We're not on the same piece of it.
50:36
It sounds like they went to an IVF clinic
50:38
and he paid a good money for a scientist.
50:40
There was a syringent at all.
50:41
That's right.
50:42
And anyway, so they had the child
50:44
and obviously it ended his marriage.
50:46
And damaged his political career.
50:49
So I've been doing a character based on Barnaby Joyce
50:51
for several years now called Barabbas Lawens.
50:53
Now I can say with great confidence
50:55
that it's highly unlikely
50:57
that anyone else on Twitter
50:58
came up with the name Barabbas Lawens.
51:01
And then so when I do Barabbas Lawens,
51:03
that's my thing.
51:05
That's your version of that.
51:08
How does Barabbas speak?
51:09
Barabbas basically speaks like someone
51:10
who is not particularly competent
51:14
or confident on camera.
51:16
But he's sort of,
51:16
he usually starts with,
51:18
God, I,
51:18
man, I'm Barabbas Lawens,
51:21
Member for Offal Seed
51:22
and Minister for Troy Cassadale.
51:25
He's a country-western singer.
51:26
So the joke is he's always minister
51:28
for some sort of country-related thing.
51:32
Reginald rural.
51:33
Minister for Bushman's henkeys.
51:35
Yeah.
51:35
Minister for reruns of McLeod's daughters.
51:37
Yeah, that kind of thing.
51:40
Yeah, so I can confidently say
51:43
no one else is going to know.
51:44
No, no, that's right.
51:46
So are you having to cobble together
51:48
something about this right now?
51:50
Yes, that's it.
51:51
So now that he's back,
51:52
I've got to do something on that.
51:54
And it's been actually exciting,
51:56
because like on Twitter,
51:57
people, you know,
51:58
loads, I've had so many tweets,
52:00
people say, oh,
52:01
this is terrible news about Irony Joe's.
52:03
But great to see Barabbas Lawens
52:05
is covering the haggen, you know?
52:06
So from a kind of career standpoint,
52:08
yeah, like, you know,
52:09
it's quite good for me,
52:12
even though, you know,
52:13
a lot of people would not be enthusiastic about it.
52:15
Look, I remember the part,
52:16
I remember looking at the polls for John Howard
52:18
as we were going into the 2007 election.
52:21
I was like, my career is over.
52:22
Yeah.
52:24
This has been my bread and ballast in 2002.
52:26
Yeah.
52:27
It's my 2007, like I was in,
52:28
I was living in France in 2007.
52:31
Oh, wow.
52:31
Yeah, excuse me.
52:32
From Crow's nest to France.
52:34
I've done it all.
52:35
And I had no idea of the momentum
52:38
that was building
52:39
behind Kevin Rudd at that time.
52:42
I remember just being
52:43
if on my own world and thinking,
52:44
oh, Howard's been prime minister for almost,
52:46
you know, as long as 150 years.
52:48
Yeah, as long as I've been switched on.
52:50
He'll be emperor for another 150 more.
52:52
He's Kevin Rudd, he'll remember.
52:53
And I remember, I went to Paris to vote.
52:55
And I went to the end, you know,
52:56
sorry, it sounds so pretentious.
52:57
But it's what happened.
52:58
I was on a school,
52:59
you know, I was on a unique exchange thing.
53:01
And I went to vote.
53:02
And there was all these people in Paris
53:04
wearing Kevin07 shirts.
53:05
Wow.
53:06
And I was like, am I missing something?
53:07
And yes, I was.
53:09
Look at him.
53:10
They're all set.
53:11
Yeah, they don't even rhyme.
53:12
No, it doesn't even work out.
53:13
They did it.
53:14
So yeah, and it was so fascinating to just,
53:16
yeah, let me get a lot.
53:19
Yeah, so since then,
53:19
I tried to be slightly more clued in.
53:21
Yeah, that I think that would help.
53:22
You could see, at least a lot,
53:25
a change of administration at a minimum,
53:27
you would expect to be something
53:28
that a satirist would keep their eye on.
53:30
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
53:31
Yeah.
53:31
And then I just started doing,
53:33
doing Kevin Rudd instead of John Howard,
53:35
and that eventually just fell apart.
53:37
Oh, he's just not as funny.
53:39
Do you still pull out the Howard from time to time, just for...
53:41
No, because I think Howard is too...
53:44
Well, occasionally,
53:45
it's occasionally people just insist.
53:47
And so it's just easier just to do it.
53:49
And then, and the way that I get around
53:51
doing an impression without doing an impression
53:54
is to articulate a particular mannerism of speech
53:57
that the person does,
53:59
and then incorporate it into my refusal to do the impression.
54:02
Great.
54:03
So one for Howard,
54:05
what I would always tell people who were working on there,
54:07
John Howard's to do,
54:09
is that he would have a, what I would call
54:11
like a sort of a preemptive negation
54:14
of whatever it was that he was saying.
54:17
So he might say,
54:19
Fab it from me to do some kind of an impression.
54:24
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I will not, no, I will not.
54:28
And so that kind of stammering series of nose
54:31
becomes then the impression as you're refusing to do the impression.
54:34
That's great.
54:35
Everybody's a Dana Carvey,
54:36
because he was obviously known for his George Bush senior
54:40
impression.
54:40
And one of his phrases was,
54:42
nah, I'm going to do it.
54:44
And so if people ask him to do the impression,
54:48
he says, no, I think he'll say something like,
54:52
well, you may want me to do the impression,
54:53
but nah, I'm going to do it.
54:57
Who did Clinton on?
54:59
Well, you had, so you did have Phil Hartman, did it?
55:02
Yeah, no, you have Darrell Hammond.
55:04
Darrell Hammond, yes, who I interviewed a bunch of times
55:07
on that post live.
55:08
He's another great SNL person who was fascinating
55:10
because he is completely apolitical.
55:12
Talk about you not being interested in the news.
55:14
He not only wasn't interested in the news,
55:16
didn't know anything about the news
55:19
and was incapable of being sufficiently interested for long
55:22
enough to even understand what he was saying.
55:24
So all of those classic sketches
55:27
about where he was playing Clinton
55:30
going up against Al Gore, sorry, against Bob Dole
55:35
and then during like the early years of,
55:39
I guess it would have been the late 90s.
55:41
He didn't even know what the jokes were about.
55:43
I mean, with the exception of the broad knowledge
55:46
that Clinton was embroiled in some kind of sex scandal,
55:48
he only knew Trump for the stakes, that was his whole thing.
55:53
But that's just saying, yeah, wow, okay, that's amazing.
55:56
So for him, it's purely performative.
55:57
It's just about noticing the mannerisms.
56:00
Yeah, right.
56:00
Okay, well, sure.
56:01
But again, and I envy the speed of it
56:03
because I have this.
56:04
Simultaneously, I feel like I seriously think
56:07
people need to be engaged in politics.
56:10
They need to be switched on.
56:10
They need to be reading.
56:11
They need to be know what's happening.
56:13
And if you can also avoid knowing what's going on,
56:16
then I wish it was the best possible thing.
56:18
Or just focus on the big stuff.
56:20
Like, have you heard that all of a book
56:22
in an episode of this show?
56:23
It's one of the early episodes you should listen to it
56:26
because it touches on something here
56:27
that you would like.
56:28
Oliver is a writer for the Guardian,
56:31
who lives in New York, who has his own column
56:33
in the Guardian globally.
56:35
And it's about happiness and psychology.
56:39
And his thesis is basically, at the moment,
56:42
we're all paying way too much attention to the news.
56:45
And we're using it as a proxy for actual life.
56:48
So we're spending, it sort of sounds a little bit like what Jordan Peterson
56:51
was saying in a way, which is we're not spending enough time
56:54
actually in meshed in our communities and our lives
56:57
and our cats.
56:58
And we're spending way too much time exercising ourselves
57:00
about things that actually don't really matter.
57:02
And we're using that as a way of feeling
57:05
almost not just good about ourselves,
57:07
but better than other people who know less
57:09
about things that are going on abroad.
57:11
As if the fact that my next door neighbor
57:14
is tending to her garden instead of fretting
57:18
about what's happening with the coronavirus in India
57:21
makes her a worse person.
57:22
But actually, my fretting about the coronavirus in India
57:25
isn't affecting anything.
57:26
So I'd be better off looking after a plan
57:28
and actually doing some good.
57:29
Yes, that's interesting.
57:31
I had to give it to live with some bad news to someone today
57:36
about someone who died.
57:38
And it was so strange.
57:40
Like within seconds of me telling them the news
57:43
that this person that we both knew had died,
57:45
they went, yeah, well, interestingly,
57:48
they bound to be back in.
57:51
It was like almost just didn't know how to talk about it.
57:55
Were they close with this person?
57:58
Not hugely close, but knew them pretty well.
58:01
And yeah, it was just funny, isn't it?
58:04
We're so unprepared.
58:05
Yeah, there was just...
58:07
I don't know how I would.
58:08
What was there to say?
58:09
I mean, when I was in high school,
58:11
our deputy principal died.
58:14
And I found out,
58:15
because I was like school wanker prefect or something,
58:18
I don't remember what capacity school student union or something.
58:21
And I had to call all my peers and tell them.
58:26
So it was the only time in my life
58:28
where I've had a succession of psychological experiments
58:32
by hearing people's reaction to some powerful news.
58:36
He was a beloved figure, a fantastic guy,
58:40
the confidant of all of us as a school community.
58:44
And we would have been in probably year 12,
58:45
so I think we were old enough to be grown-ups.
58:47
And it was so fascinating to hear
58:50
some people burst out laughing.
58:52
It's like, what?
58:53
Wow.
58:54
Some people were silent for 15 seconds.
58:58
A few cried, most didn't.
59:01
Some changed the subject.
59:02
Others asked lots of personal questions about how it happened.
59:07
Yes, yes.
59:08
It's really interesting.
59:09
Like none of us is...
59:10
None of us has...
59:11
It's one of those areas where you don't have the template
59:14
to pull out of your jacket pocket.
59:15
That's so interesting.
59:17
I think there's something that I think about
59:19
when sometimes, like the other day,
59:21
I had to get an Uber because the trains were cancelled
59:26
because clearly something had happened.
59:30
Someone had jumped in front of a train or something.
59:33
I think they'd even announced it.
59:35
I don't think they're supposed to,
59:36
but I think they'd even announced
59:37
someone's been hit by a train.
59:40
And so I caught an Uber and they were asking something like,
59:44
oh, why are you getting an Uber?
59:47
And it's like, oh, the trains aren't running
59:49
because someone says like,
59:51
someone got hit by a train and they're like,
59:52
oh, did they die?
59:53
I was like, I don't know.
59:54
But they don't know.
59:55
And also just like,
59:56
don't ask, like, even if they did.
1:00:00
I mean, assume they probably,
1:00:01
if you get hit by a train,
1:00:02
they torn completely up on that train.
1:00:04
Were they recognisable?
1:00:05
I was weirdly annoyed by it.
1:00:07
And there's also that thing where
1:00:08
when you get that piece of news that the trains have been cancelled,
1:00:10
you've got to juggle those two
1:00:13
competing feelings, which is,
1:00:15
oh, Jesus Christ, I'm already running late.
1:00:17
And now what am I going to do?
1:00:18
And then like, someone right now has just,
1:00:21
has had the worst possible thing happening.
1:00:23
There's going to be rippling effects on their friends and family.
1:00:26
It's so weird.
1:00:28
It's where you're preoccupied.
1:00:30
And I always try and kind of just take a step back and go
1:00:33
as big of things at play.
1:00:34
Yeah.
1:00:35
You're going to be late.
1:00:35
That's funny, though.
1:00:36
Yeah.
1:00:37
Now I remember my mum saying that when we were living in London,
1:00:41
she was on the tube station.
1:00:44
And they said that the underground's delayed
1:00:46
because of the body on the tracks.
1:00:47
And there was a woman standing next to her
1:00:50
who went, oh, I can't see her.
1:00:52
I looked at her watch.
1:00:52
Yes, your mum, like, that's that affected her so much.
1:00:55
Like, she came over and told us about,
1:00:56
like, imagine being that much of the bitch.
1:00:59
That's it.
1:01:00
Yeah, like, I remember thinking,
1:01:04
it's something, I was in London when in 2005,
1:01:07
when the tube bombings occurred.
1:01:10
And there was the bus as well.
1:01:12
This was July 777.
1:01:15
And I was catching the tube that morning,
1:01:18
I went down into whichever station I was at
1:01:21
and I went to buy a ticket.
1:01:23
And as I was buying a ticket, the system,
1:01:26
suddenly the woman behind the camera said,
1:01:28
the system says, I can't,
1:01:30
I can't, it's sort of like shut down.
1:01:32
You, I can't say, you're going to have to walk.
1:01:34
I was like, what?
1:01:36
So she's like, I don't know,
1:01:37
something's happened, you're going to have to walk.
1:01:38
Oh, okay.
1:01:40
And so I walked to where I needed to get to
1:01:43
and then I ended up I was visiting family outside of London.
1:01:45
And it was not until hours later
1:01:47
that I felt that would actually happen.
1:01:48
Anyway, I came back to London at the end of the day.
1:01:51
And obviously for that period,
1:01:52
for the whole day, there'd been no trains or buses.
1:01:55
And just at the very end of the day,
1:01:56
they started up some services again.
1:01:58
I just remember people pushing and shoving
1:02:00
to get onto the bus.
1:02:02
I was just like, surely this is the time
1:02:04
to all just kind of look out for each other,
1:02:07
let's take our time, let's not rush.
1:02:09
For a start, if you don't make it under the bus,
1:02:11
the bus might blow up anyway.
1:02:13
Maybe that's the time there.
1:02:14
It's a lucky day.
1:02:15
So yeah, it was, yeah, human nature.
1:02:18
I mean, that's, that's it, obviously, sometimes.
1:02:20
Like, come from away.
1:02:23
Is a musical that's currently showing it, Sydney.
1:02:25
Have you seen this funny?
1:02:26
I've interviewed the creators and the writers of it.
1:02:29
And I never managed to get around to seeing it
1:02:31
when I was living in New York.
1:02:33
And I was in Queensland for the opening night
1:02:35
a couple of weeks ago, so I couldn't make it.
1:02:37
To that, either.
1:02:38
So all of that is a roundabout way of apologizing
1:02:41
to anyone who might be involved in come from a way
1:02:43
who's listening to this, I'm not, I haven't willfully
1:02:45
not saying it.
1:02:46
I want to.
1:02:47
A long story short, about what happened after 9-11,
1:02:50
all the planes had to ground all the other planes
1:02:53
that were in the air in case any of the others had been hijacked.
1:02:56
And this, you know, small town in Newfoundland
1:02:59
talking in thousands of people.
1:03:00
And it was just this amazing story of humans
1:03:02
coming together and looking out for each other.
1:03:04
And so I guess what I'm saying is,
1:03:06
at least there's that.
1:03:07
There is, you know, there is the human coming together.
1:03:11
But then maybe there's not that much of it.
1:03:13
Well, I thought that the pandemic would bring us all together as well.
1:03:16
I thought so too.
1:03:17
Yes.
1:03:18
I mean, if anything, it's exacerbated division.
1:03:20
Certainly in the countries where it's been the most intense.
1:03:22
Yes.
1:03:23
Maybe we weren't in a good position to have a pandemic at that.
1:03:27
Well, I mean, looping this back to social media
1:03:30
where we started, I wonder whether this inability
1:03:32
to raise our eyes off the minutiae of life
1:03:36
and to be appreciative and grateful for the big picture
1:03:40
is contaminated by a social media where, you know, like,
1:03:45
I said in my Melbourne Comedy Festival show,
1:03:49
like it's amazing to me that when I was in my teens,
1:03:53
you would make a plan to meet someone at the movies in the city.
1:03:58
And if they were 10 minutes late, you just stood there.
1:04:02
And it's amazing to me that that's amazing to me
1:04:05
because that wouldn't have seemed that I waited for a friend.
1:04:10
I think close to an hour.
1:04:12
I mean, and there's nothing you can do.
1:04:14
You can go to a pay phone, but who are you going to call?
1:04:16
They don't have a phone.
1:04:18
The same thing.
1:04:19
And then reverse a friend of mine waited an hour for me
1:04:21
because I had something something happened to me on my way to meet up with them.
1:04:25
Yes, extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary.
1:04:26
And not just the inability to contact them.
1:04:29
Your life was punctuated by the need to do nothing.
1:04:33
Oh, yes, yes, of course.
1:04:35
So you're standing there for seven, even if it's seven minutes waiting for your friend
1:04:39
outside the movie cinema, those are seven minutes in which you were required to do nothing,
1:04:44
but look at the people going past, days at the clouds,
1:04:47
think your own thoughts.
1:04:49
I think, and I think I had to spend the way my mind worked,
1:04:53
was I had to, I was performing that entire time,
1:04:56
which was, I am performing someone who is fine.
1:04:59
I'm fine.
1:05:00
They'll be here any minute.
1:05:01
Right. Sure.
1:05:02
I'm not.
1:05:03
I have, they haven't forgotten about me.
1:05:05
I'm not being jilted.
1:05:06
That's it.
1:05:07
Please, please, money.
1:05:08
Don't leave me alone.
1:05:09
Don't abandon me.
1:05:11
That's it.
1:05:11
So that's, I'm doing a whole performance the whole time.
1:05:13
So I was, I think that's where all my mental energy went.
1:05:16
Is portraying a man who is comfortable with you?
1:05:20
Are you still doing that performance, Mark?
1:05:23
You think I'm performing all the time?
1:05:24
I think that's, I think that's what,
1:05:25
so I think we're all, I'm fascinated by the performances
1:05:29
that we do for each other every single day,
1:05:31
whether it's the, as you're passing someone in, you know,
1:05:34
in a narrow corridor and you do that weird half smile.
1:05:38
And that's it.
1:05:40
That's a performance.
1:05:41
And let talk energy and you thought about it.
1:05:43
But it isn't a part of the, what is one thing
1:05:46
that we find appealing about charismatic people is
1:05:49
that they don't seem to be performing for sure.
1:05:51
Yeah, like the less performance, the less out of
1:05:54
us, they seem to be the more charming we think the person is.
1:05:57
Yeah.
1:05:58
There's nothing, because a person who seems to be putting on
1:06:00
the charm is sleazy.
1:06:02
Yes.
1:06:03
Yes.
1:06:04
Yeah.
1:06:05
That's true.
1:06:06
Yeah.
1:06:07
I'm just noding.
1:06:08
Are you giving me some advice Mark?
1:06:09
I think you're coming on a little strong.
1:06:11
Take the hint.
1:06:12
You're a sleaze bag, son.
1:06:14
No, I just, but I sometimes also wonder whether or not our
1:06:17
creativity got fostered in those moments of nothingness.
1:06:20
Yes.
1:06:21
The moments of nothingness are now deprived of us by social media
1:06:26
because you have a supercomputer that you can pull out.
1:06:28
You pocket and see what other people are saying about Peter
1:06:30
Kredlin.
1:06:31
Yeah.
1:06:32
And her award instead of having to come up with a relationship
1:06:36
to your own existence.
1:06:37
Yeah.
1:06:38
I think I'm generally an optimist.
1:06:40
So I will kind of, I'll tell myself, well, I'm absorbing
1:06:43
information and I'm taking in stuff that may one day lead to
1:06:47
some sort of creative, you know, a lightning bolt moment.
1:06:52
I'm not having it right.
1:06:53
You fall on yourself, son.
1:06:55
This is the trick of the social media, like convinces you
1:06:58
that what you're doing is worthy.
1:06:59
Yeah, but I mean, podcasts is like this.
1:07:02
That's something that I actually feel.
1:07:03
I feel great about podcasts.
1:07:05
I love that, you know, that that is there for me in those
1:07:09
dull moments that I feel like I am injecting some sort of
1:07:13
entertainment or information.
1:07:16
It's also a place where you have enough time that you can
1:07:19
talk about things that like, especially on this show,
1:07:22
where we intentionally talk about like you were just saying
1:07:25
earlier, like what were you saying inseminating or something
1:07:28
instead of just fucking yeah, but like the the idea that you
1:07:33
because to be contrary and on Twitter is going to cause all
1:07:38
kinds of problems because really if you're saying
1:07:41
anything interesting, then you can't do it justice in the
1:07:44
space that Twitter has for it.
1:07:46
Whereas when you're talking for an hour and a half to
1:07:47
somebody, you can say the thing.
1:07:50
You can articulate it.
1:07:51
You can throw around some ideas.
1:07:52
You can bat them about.
1:07:54
It's still possible to be canceled from it, but you can
1:07:56
only be canceled if people are willfully trying to misrepresent
1:07:59
your good intentions.
1:08:00
Yes, whereas on Twitter, it's very easy to be misunderstood.
1:08:04
Yes.
1:08:05
You know, you just say fuck, baby.
1:08:06
Quellum is not the appropriate thing to say.
1:08:09
No, something I believe.
1:08:10
It's just that just reminded me of something that I used to
1:08:12
do on Twitter, which I now I don't do anymore because it's
1:08:15
I again, nothing from it.
1:08:17
But sometimes there'll be a new story that'll go around that
1:08:20
will just raise.
1:08:21
There'll be a flag will go up where you just go.
1:08:23
That sounds like bullshit to me and and I'll look into it
1:08:27
further and I'll and I'll find and I'll realize that what
1:08:30
or I'll either realize or I'll come to a conclusion that
1:08:33
this story is not really all that it seems.
1:08:35
But if you and if you but if you then come in and say,
1:08:38
Hey, guys, I know we've all been having fun with this
1:08:40
story.
1:08:41
But if you actually read a little bit further, you might see
1:08:43
actually to completely innocent misunderstanding and like and
1:08:47
so I've tried I've done that in the past.
1:08:49
Hey, everyone.
1:08:50
This is actually what actually happened here.
1:08:52
No one wants to know.
1:08:53
No.
1:08:54
No.
1:08:55
Let's play.
1:08:56
Yeah.
1:08:57
Meal and actually I just dug into the data.
1:09:01
Yeah.
1:09:02
Actually, the person who who appeared to have a passport with
1:09:05
the name fuck that bitch.
1:09:07
The P.H.U.C.D.A.T.P.O.C.H.
1:09:09
It's actually a lie.
1:09:11
They actually made it up.
1:09:12
I mean, that was a specific example.
1:09:13
Really?
1:09:14
Yeah.
1:09:15
Was this like surely?
1:09:16
Do you remember there was a story where there was like,
1:09:17
Oh, I think it was like a read the means man.
1:09:19
He's his passport.
1:09:20
His name is fuck that bitch P.H.U.C.D.A.T.
1:09:23
Good.
1:09:24
And I was just like, I think we would have heard about this
1:09:26
guy before now.
1:09:28
I think surely everyone.
1:09:30
If that was your thinking,
1:09:32
possibly in Australia, surely Carl Stefan over.
1:09:35
It would have been all over it, surely.
1:09:36
It would have been across the morning.
1:09:37
So this person was now, I think, 25 or something.
1:09:40
I think they'd run up in Australia.
1:09:43
Surely it would have gone around every school,
1:09:45
but there was a kid named fuck that bitch there with him.
1:09:49
And I was like, this does not add up.
1:09:51
And then with as things came out eventually,
1:09:53
it was real.
1:09:54
No, yes, they made it up.
1:09:56
And there's no prizes for being right.
1:09:58
No, there are no prizes to be run on Twitter.
1:10:00
Of course not.
1:10:01
No on Twitter.
1:10:02
No.
1:10:03
So ultimately, what would you like to do beyond this current gig?
1:10:07
Sitcom?
1:10:08
Well, I would.
1:10:09
I would.
1:10:10
I would.
1:10:11
Because it is still the dream.
1:10:12
I mean, I'd love to do.
1:10:14
What were your sitcom fantasy hero?
1:10:16
What are you?
1:10:18
I mean, weirdly, the Golden Girls was actually one of my main ones.
1:10:23
Well, that's true.
1:10:24
Actually, yeah.
1:10:25
When we were kids, the most popular shows in Australia were
1:10:29
probably the Golden Girls family ties.
1:10:32
Rose Ann.
1:10:33
Cosby Show.
1:10:34
Was the Cosby Show still on?
1:10:36
We're not.
1:10:37
Maybe.
1:10:38
Yeah.
1:10:39
Into the early 90s.
1:10:40
Yeah.
1:10:41
You were watching it when you were three.
1:10:43
But yeah, that makes sense.
1:10:47
Murphy Brown.
1:10:48
Murphy Brown.
1:10:49
Yeah.
1:10:50
Candace Bergen.
1:10:51
Yeah.
1:10:52
There was.
1:10:53
There was another one that was just thing of not wrote.
1:10:55
Yeah.
1:10:56
Rose Ann.
1:10:57
It was more there was there was grace on the fire.
1:10:59
There was Caroline in the City.
1:11:00
There was Veronica's closet.
1:11:02
Yeah.
1:11:03
Oh, no.
1:11:04
I remember what I was thinking of.
1:11:05
This always amazes me when I tell Americans.
1:11:07
In fact, I told Fran Drescher when she was on her first live, that the Nanny was the number
1:11:11
one show in Australia, the number one show of all shows at the time that it was on.
1:11:18
And she was like, why?
1:11:20
And I was like, I don't know.
1:11:21
Like what?
1:11:22
When you think about it, what does this have to do with N.
1:11:24
She's from Fluching in Queens, she's such an archetypal character from that particular
1:11:30
part of the world.
1:11:31
I always get a little, it's funny, something that comes up in terms of Australian funding
1:11:37
bodies for like screen content, something that's always pushed is this idea of Australian
1:11:41
content, Australian stories.
1:11:44
And then at the same time, there's questions about, well, can this play internationally
1:11:49
in the right?
1:11:50
So we want to make these sort of Australian stories, but in terms of like anything beyond
1:11:54
that, just like, well, because that's the other thing that I think probably they're
1:11:57
thinking about more now is, could this be something that plays on, yeah, can we make
1:12:01
our money back from it?
1:12:02
Yeah.
1:12:03
International styles.
1:12:04
And I always go, Alan Partridge, Alan Partridge is so specific.
1:12:09
And yet, and I've never been to Norwich, but I don't need to know who Sue Cook is for
1:12:14
me to think, to understand, oh, she's clearly a media personality, that Alan has some sort
1:12:18
of semi-frustrated relationship with.
1:12:24
So yeah, the idea that yes, the nanny can be here.
1:12:28
Why not?
1:12:29
And so why, yeah, that's why there's a bluey is thrilling, and it's like, yeah, we can
1:12:34
just make something that, yeah, it's Australian voices and, you know, but people can relate to
1:12:38
the gin more sort of family gist of it.
1:12:40
There was a great line by, there's a wonderful writing coach slash stand up comedy coach
1:12:47
of, like, kind of a god of, of New York stand up who runs classes in Manhattan called
1:12:52
Steve Rosenfield, who found that the American comedy institute, who became a something of
1:12:56
a mentor of mine when I moved there, because he was so good at honing my generalized funny
1:13:00
ideas into jokes that would actually get laughs at clubs when I was doing stand up when
1:13:05
I first went there, and he had the best piece of advice about writing, which is the specific
1:13:10
is universal.
1:13:11
Oh, yes.
1:13:12
Yeah.
1:13:13
He was like, don't try to make things appeal to everybody, because then they become generic
1:13:16
and they feel pat.
1:13:17
Yes.
1:13:18
They seem like cliches.
1:13:19
Everybody's done that before, but like, if you talk about something that's extremely specific
1:13:23
to you, then in its authenticity, it'll resonate with everybody, because they won't have
1:13:28
exactly the same situation, but they'll have something close enough that smells, because
1:13:33
it smells so real.
1:13:34
Yes.
1:13:35
Like Woody Allen is like so specific, and yet he appeals to so many people, because he's
1:13:39
suy generous.
1:13:40
That's exactly what he is.
1:13:41
And Larry, like Larry David, like, it feels like it's extremely.
1:13:44
Some sign filled the whole show, and you could make the same argument about the nanny,
1:13:48
right?
1:13:49
Like, sign filled is a very particular milieu.
1:13:51
I remember Frank Drescher appearing on Cone and years ago, and she told this anecdote,
1:13:57
and I thought it was such an interesting snapshot of fame at that level, where she's
1:14:02
like, I think she'd met a guy, and she'd got on with them, and then went back to his
1:14:07
plays, whatever.
1:14:08
And then, I think, you know, he didn't impregnate her, but they had sex, and then I think
1:14:16
that man was Barnaby.
1:14:18
And then he rolled over, and he said, man, can't believe I just fucked the nanny.
1:14:23
And just like, can you imagine, imagine hearing that, just like, but that's how you exist
1:14:29
in someone's brain.
1:14:30
Yeah.
1:14:31
Yeah.
1:14:32
That's weird, isn't it?
1:14:33
Fame would be weird.
1:14:34
Do you experience it?
1:14:35
No, I'm sort of a mild, a low, very low level.
1:14:41
I mean, like, usually just mistaken for someone else, so, I mean, I do, yeah, I remember
1:14:48
like some, I remember just, I was just a cafe, and someone came up to me and said, sorry,
1:14:54
I'm so sorry.
1:14:55
Are you, are you BondiVit?
1:14:57
And, I mean, oh, no, no, I'm not BondiVit, she's like, oh, sorry, I'm, have a good day,
1:15:04
and she's walking off, and I'm like, well, will I have something famous in my own
1:15:06
right?
1:15:07
Come back.
1:15:08
I'm the other tall blonde on the television.
1:15:11
Yeah.
1:15:12
So, yeah, and then, so, yeah, occasionally, I'll get stopped, and I had one thing recently
1:15:19
where my, I had my two boys with me, and it was a bad day, it just, it was a really bad
1:15:24
day with something had gone wrong at a place in her, one of them was crying, and it was
1:15:31
all, everything was just very, very difficult, and then the youngest one, hey, the two-year-old,
1:15:36
he wed his pants, and so, okay, I gotta go find a parent's room, sort that out.
1:15:41
And then we go and get some dinner, and it's just me with the two boys, and then the
1:15:47
youngest wed his pants, again, like in the middle of food court, and like actually pissed
1:15:52
on the floor.
1:15:53
Have you heard of Nappy?
1:15:55
No, because he actually has been trained, so he's beyond that phase, and then just decided
1:16:01
to give us a recap, and so, yeah, so then I'm wiping up, you know, I'm grabbing all
1:16:05
the napkins from the, you know, dinner, and wiping up the piss, and I'm carrying these
1:16:10
piss-soaked napkins through the bin, and some guy comes up to me, goes, Mr. Humphries,
1:16:17
a big fan, and I was like, my youngest is just pissed his pants twice in the last half
1:16:23
hour.
1:16:24
Thank you.
1:16:25
I needed this.
1:16:26
Thank you very much.
1:16:27
You've made my day a little better.
1:16:29
Yeah, that's funny.
1:16:30
I mean, that's part of being on telly as well.
1:16:32
I mean, the radio is good.
1:16:34
Radio is blessed because people know you know you, but they can't tell that you're used
1:16:38
when you're walking past down the street, although one funny thing is there were a few occasions
1:16:46
where I would just be talking in public, and this has only happened really after being
1:16:53
on Joe Rogan's podcast, which I was on six times and has, you know, a hundred million
1:17:00
listeners or something.
1:17:01
And so once I was with my parents, they had come over to Europe for a holiday, and I'd
1:17:08
come over from New York to visit them.
1:17:12
This wasn't long ago, and we went to Auschwitz, because dad's mum was a Holocaust survivor.
1:17:22
I mean, she wasn't in the death camps, but all of her family where she managed to come
1:17:25
to Australia and escaped during the war, but yeah, so we're at Auschwitz, and we just
1:17:32
exit.
1:17:33
And I hear, excuse me, excuse me, Josh, are you Josh Steps?
1:17:39
Man, I heard you on Joe, I can just tell by your accent, and I was like, wow, I've just
1:17:45
been through the most traumatized.
1:17:46
I've just been looking at piles of shoes.
1:17:53
Yeah, but it was nice.
1:17:55
Yeah, oh, that's a better, I mean, that's kind.
1:17:57
People being generous.
1:17:58
That's the interesting thing, because inevitably we have come across people in day-to-day
1:18:04
life who hate us, you know, who have heard us, seen us, you know, like it.
1:18:09
But thank heavens in reality, they don't say anything unless they're on Twitter.
1:18:14
But if they're on Twitter, they make themselves well and truly known.
1:18:17
That's it.
1:18:18
Yeah.
1:18:19
So the nanny, you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you wouldn't
1:18:26
draw into, like, satirical, I guess, were there satirical things?
1:18:30
No, I wasn't, I mean, I don't think I was.
1:18:32
No, I mean, I, yeah, I certainly saw, because I can watch the parking door, you know, when
1:18:36
I was a kid, but I never thought I would end up, you know, down that path.
1:18:41
No, I just liked the idea of, you know, I mean, I guess there was like,
1:18:45
the sound park, which, which was satire.
1:18:48
Yeah, yes.
1:18:49
And I think, yeah, and I scripted satire and something that at that age, I probably
1:18:54
wasn't as conscious of as being satirical.
1:18:57
But now, I mean, I haven't, I haven't watched South Park in a couple of years.
1:19:01
But any, basically any time I watch South Park, now I always go, God, that is the
1:19:06
most base sort of childish approach to making that really sharp point well played.
1:19:14
Yeah.
1:19:15
Absolutely.
1:19:16
I'm always impressed.
1:19:17
I mean, their movie, if you've seen the movie, the South Park movie, yeah, which, by
1:19:22
the way, you know, it was originally written as South Park all hell breaks loose.
1:19:26
And the studio said, you can't say hell, it was going to offend people.
1:19:30
So they brought it back as bigger, longer, and uncut.
1:19:33
And the studio didn't get the gag.
1:19:34
Amazing.
1:19:35
I always love those stories about having to get around these restrictions.
1:19:38
Yeah.
1:19:39
I haven't seen it in years.
1:19:40
I mean, it's worth re, it's worth a rewatch, not that I've seen it in about five years.
1:19:44
But when I did watch it at the second time, like it is so beautifully meta, because the
1:19:49
plot, if you'll recall, is about satirists who make a cartoon so offensive that the US
1:19:57
goes to war with Canada to avenge the offense caused by the cartoon movie, which of course
1:20:02
is a proxy for this movie in itself, and a predictor of the inevitable outrage, which
1:20:08
it will cause.
1:20:09
Right.
1:20:10
Yeah.
1:20:11
Yeah.
1:20:12
No, it's fantastic.
1:20:13
And so, you know, I'm always impressed by that.
1:20:14
But, you know, it was not something that appealed to me, but, yeah, but I'd look, ideally,
1:20:19
you know, the logical thing would be, I'd love to make, you know, Australia's version
1:20:23
of the thick of it or, or, but we have had, you know, we've had the hollow man and there's
1:20:30
a utopia, which sort of is kind of a version to eat sort of in that space.
1:20:35
So I just, I don't know if the time is right for the sort of show that I would,
1:20:38
Well, you just have to do it right.
1:20:39
I mean, Vip, like takes the conceit and then elevates it to that whole new kind of, I
1:20:46
don't know, upright citizens brigade inspired level of sort of 30 rock, Tina Fey, rapid fire,
1:20:52
absurdists, humor, I'd love to see, I'd love to see some of that here.
1:20:56
Do you worry about getting cancelled?
1:20:58
Yeah, absolutely.
1:20:59
I mean, the, because I think it's a funny thing because I know in my heart of hearts what
1:21:06
I'm trying to say with a sketch and what my intention is, and, but I am absolutely conscious
1:21:12
of the ability to get, to get it wrong to actually have blind spots, be people's own
1:21:19
interpretations of things that maybe you intend to something one way, but it comes across
1:21:22
another and then see people who deliberately willfully misrepresent and are waiting for
1:21:26
you to screw up and because they would love to take you down.
1:21:30
But I mean, I'll give you a concrete example a few weeks ago of one where we, just a short
1:21:37
little thing that we agonised over.
1:21:40
And so what it was was, there was a campaign that the government had paid for which was
1:21:47
to teach young people about consent and the way that it was done was with this, the milkshake.
1:21:57
Yes, so why don't I play a bit of the milkshake, what kind of a milkshake is that?
1:22:02
To cross into the action zone, those people must agree.
1:22:06
Do you want to try my milkshake?
1:22:08
Yes, I do.
1:22:10
Is it better than yours?
1:22:12
No, I think I prefer mine.
1:22:15
But what happens when one person takes action without an agreement?
1:22:20
You do, huh?
1:22:22
Well, drink it, drink it all.
1:22:26
What are you doing?
1:22:28
This is what we call moving the line.
1:22:31
Okay, so that was the milkshake ad.
1:22:33
Yes, so it was a little bit confusing.
1:22:35
Very confusing.
1:22:36
It seems to be inspired by a British comedy called Look Around You from that 20 years ago
1:22:41
that Peter Seraphinovich had co-created, which is well worth looking up.
1:22:46
For some reason, that seemed to be a reference point for them in this and then there's the
1:22:49
whole milkshake subplot, whatever.
1:22:51
Anyway, so I've occasionally on 730 Donna character who is like a sort of a film director
1:22:59
who works with the government.
1:23:00
It's a character named Tony Chaville and he, you know, whenever, you know, sometimes it
1:23:05
might have been that he was Scott Morrison's social media video producer.
1:23:09
And in this case, he was the man who directed these milkshake campaigns.
1:23:13
And we had this one section which was that what you think this idea was about.
1:23:18
You should have seen some of the other other ideas that had been quoted.
1:23:21
And so now, so firstly, so the conceit is already that what you're about to see is a worse
1:23:26
idea.
1:23:27
Now, that's inherently a problematic potentially already because you're now actually
1:23:33
going to make something that might be offensive or bad.
1:23:37
But you're knowingly doing it, you're knowingly satirizing the pretend thing that you've
1:23:42
created.
1:23:43
So what would the idea was that there was a character.
1:23:47
So back in the side, this context for American audiences, in the 1980s, there was a comedy
1:23:52
character on a show called the comedy company called Con the Frudera.
1:23:57
He was a Greek frudera, you know, grocery worked in the grocery and had a series of catch
1:24:04
phrases.
1:24:05
And he was an icon, an iconic character.
1:24:07
And so our idea was that there was going to part of the consent campaign was a character
1:24:10
they'd created called Concent the Frudera.
1:24:13
So we have this idea of Concent the Frudera, we're going to do this sort of homage parody
1:24:18
of Con the Frudera wrapped in this consent idea.
1:24:24
And then the question became, right, who can play Concent the Frudera?
1:24:29
Because part of the problem with Con the Frudera was that it was a white man, a Mark Mitchell,
1:24:35
playing a Greek character.
1:24:37
Now, there are two trains of thoughts on this.
1:24:39
There are those who say that he was embraced by the Greek community and was a beloved
1:24:44
character.
1:24:45
And yes, it was a white man, but we loved him anyway.
1:24:46
And he was good for the community, he was a positive character.
1:24:50
And then there are those who say, it should never be a white man playing that character.
1:24:53
It's offensive to play, you know, you know, you know, the arguments are, so there's
1:24:57
these two trains of thought, okay, so keeping that in mind, can we now add another layer,
1:25:03
can consent the frudera?
1:25:05
If I'm parodying this white man who played a Greek man, can I play a man playing?
1:25:12
Can I, can I, can I as a white man, play a white man, playing a Greek character?
1:25:16
So we weren't sure about that.
1:25:19
And there is a comedian that Evan and I love, I think Greek, Australian, Alexi, to the
1:25:23
office.
1:25:24
And we reached out to him and said, oh, any chance you'd been interested in doing this,
1:25:27
he was not able to do it, but Dan Illich was able to do it.
1:25:30
Now, Dan is not the right, you know, so he's, he's not the right, but not the right
1:25:36
ethnicity.
1:25:37
Even though his grandfather was an Italian grocer.
1:25:41
So there's all this stuff that we're now agonizing over is Ken Dan Illich with his Italian
1:25:46
grocer grandfather.
1:25:47
I mean, he looks like he could have been a Greek, Greek grocer, Dan, he matches the image.
1:25:53
We got ourselves, he himself tangled up in knots about this.
1:25:56
Ultimately, we did it with Dan, Dan was great.
1:25:59
And the response was fantastic.
1:26:01
And so it was fine.
1:26:02
But the reality is, is that to get to that point of being fine, we spent a good hour or
1:26:08
two discussing, can we, can we do this?
1:26:12
And I guess the question then for the broader culture becomes in moments like that was
1:26:18
something gained by agonizing about it or by agonizing it and ending up casting Dan
1:26:24
instead of you're doing it.
1:26:26
Well, I think something was gained in the sense that I think Dan's terrific, so I'm very
1:26:29
happy to obviously have Dan.
1:26:31
No, but you didn't cast him because he's terrific.
1:26:33
Oh, well, well, let's, I think it's a combination of you wanted someone who could nail it and
1:26:37
also ideally could match that character so that you would be able to put out that potential
1:26:42
fire.
1:26:43
That's right.
1:26:44
But what I mean is, is the existence of those fires doing something good, because I'm perfectly
1:26:48
happy for there to be fires when they're in the service of justice.
1:26:52
Yeah.
1:26:53
So I guess, like, was Dan, like, is Dan more deserving of, is the point that, that the
1:26:59
Dan's of the world, I think the point is that people of color have been so, for so long
1:27:03
overlooked.
1:27:04
Yes.
1:27:05
And there, there have been these lazy casting decisions where you would just get a white
1:27:09
heartthrob in Hollywood to play an Asian and you would like, take down their eyes and
1:27:14
they go, oh, me Chinese and you think that was okay.
1:27:18
So you want to rectify that and make sure that doesn't happen again and make sure that
1:27:22
if there are a brilliant Asian actors, they actually get a look in for those parts.
1:27:27
Is Dan one of those, not really, like, I love Dan, I'm sure he did a great job.
1:27:33
He's not a, he's not a member of, he's not even a member of the community who is being,
1:27:39
who you're, who you're satirizing here.
1:27:41
He's not a member of the, of the Greek community.
1:27:42
He just sort of looks a bit like it.
1:27:44
So then the question mark becomes like, what, what's the point of this whole dance?
1:27:48
Well, I mean, I think the broad answer I would give is that it's certainly, I think
1:27:53
it's good to be aware of these things.
1:27:54
It's, it's, and to be, I think it's important to be consciously trying to make sure that
1:28:00
you're not repeating the mistakes of the past and just kind of perpetuating, you know,
1:28:05
problems that have already existed.
1:28:06
But I think from a selfish standpoint, no, it was not useful to me because it was,
1:28:12
it wasted writing time and things, you know, time that could have been spent on making
1:28:16
the sketch better, was spent agonizing over a backlash that, you know, didn't happen.
1:28:22
Yeah, from, from a selfish standpoint, no, it was not useful at all.
1:28:26
From a broader conversational standpoint, maybe it's good that we were thinking, maybe
1:28:31
it's good that we were thinking about that.
1:28:32
Maybe there's, I'm just thinking to myself, thinking out loud now, maybe there's a secondary
1:28:36
objective in addition to making sure that people of color excluded from parts, which
1:28:41
is that you want the, you want everything that's, that's coming out to sort of look more
1:28:47
and more like the country, you know, it's a bit like you're saying about film Australia.
1:28:51
You want to tell uniquely Australian stories.
1:28:52
So part of the Australian story is the migrant story from Greece.
1:28:57
Then you want someone who at least looks possibly Greek to be in that.
1:29:00
Otherwise, everything looks like it's a caricature, which I suppose makes sense.
1:29:04
But we are getting to a point at which, as you say, I think there are a lot of, there's
1:29:09
a lot of man hours and woman hours being put into preemptively avoiding those fires.
1:29:15
Yeah.
1:29:16
And I think it comes to us part of it as well as just, I guess I would, I would argue
1:29:20
for a general kind of good faith based discourse, which is extremely naive.
1:29:27
But just like I, I sort of hope that people would kind of, I'd like to see a little bit
1:29:31
more benefit of the doubt.
1:29:32
Yeah.
1:29:33
Well, I mean, have you seen that Lynn Manuel Miranda has just put out an apology for in
1:29:39
the Heights?
1:29:40
Right.
1:29:41
So like Lynn Manuel Miranda, who wrote Hamilton, before he wrote Hamilton, had this other hit
1:29:45
brilliant musical called In the Heights, which has just come out in the movie theaters.
1:29:53
And he has had to apologize to do one of these sort of groveling apologies about how I'm
1:29:58
going to listen and learn.
1:29:59
And now is, you know, my time to learn from my mistakes because he as a Latino guy who
1:30:06
has written nothing but Latino and black stories of American culture and history apparently
1:30:13
didn't cast enough black Latinos in, in the Heights.
1:30:18
Right.
1:30:19
So they weren't dark skinned enough.
1:30:21
So there was a lack of representation because they were more slightly pale skinned kind
1:30:26
of cubano Latinos in the cast.
1:30:30
So like, yeah, I mean, if Lynn Manuel Miranda isn't good enough for you, the man who
1:30:36
turned the founding fathers black and has just released a brilliant blockbuster about,
1:30:41
you know, centering Latino voices.
1:30:43
Yeah.
1:30:44
It's funny.
1:30:45
It's funny.
1:30:46
Like, I don't know.
1:30:47
He has to apologize.
1:30:48
Yeah.
1:30:49
This is sort of related.
1:30:50
I don't know if it, because I'm not quite sure how the criticism started coming out.
1:30:55
But one thing I'm very interested in is this, there've been times where, I can think
1:31:00
of three times where I've seen someone say something on Twitter where I can very quickly
1:31:06
realize they don't actually understand what they've said and that what they've just
1:31:10
put out there is going to be offensive to some people.
1:31:14
And on those occasions, I've gone and I've, fortunately, there were people who were following
1:31:19
me and I've gone and DMed those people and just gone, just so you know, I know, I know
1:31:25
I know that you probably didn't mean this.
1:31:27
That image that you've just posted or that joke you just made or what have you actually,
1:31:31
there's actually this back story to it.
1:31:33
And it's been so interesting every single time that those people have come back and said,
1:31:37
oh my God, thank you so much for making me wear this.
1:31:39
I've deleted to it now.
1:31:40
Obviously within the moment we can't delete a film.
1:31:43
But this, I'm very, I can't remember the name of the lady who has coined the term calling
1:31:50
in as opposed to calling out a big fan of it.
1:31:54
If you see something where you, where you suspect that the person probably had the best
1:31:58
intention, but maybe not the best execution, if there's any way they're standing in front
1:32:03
of the bus, just push them out of the way before the bus says any way that you can help
1:32:07
them out, right?
1:32:08
Because I think it's such an interesting choice when someone decides to hit that quote
1:32:12
tweet button and just goes, oh, I could go and try and help this person who I can clearly
1:32:18
see has just accidentally stepped on a landmine.
1:32:22
He said, I've decided to do my little performance.
1:32:25
Hey, everybody.
1:32:26
Yeah.
1:32:27
And also, this is the thing I don't understand.
1:32:28
If we agree that the thing is offensive, why is it so important and that people should
1:32:33
not see the offensive thing?
1:32:34
Why do you brought up?
1:32:35
Why are you broadcasting it?
1:32:36
Yeah.
1:32:37
So I kind of, yeah.
1:32:38
But that's not the point.
1:32:39
We all know it's not the point is the point is to grandstand and to create, to have
1:32:44
a witch hunt.
1:32:45
Yes.
1:32:46
Sure.
1:32:47
To throw the virgin into the rim of the volcano to appease the lodge.
1:32:52
That's it.
1:32:53
So anyway, that's that's my sort of Twitter 101.
1:32:56
If you occasionally, if you see someone and you get the sense from their track record that
1:33:01
they're probably a decent person who just walked you know, walked to the wrong door.
1:33:07
Yeah.
1:33:08
Sometimes they're a person who just doesn't, who hasn't thought about it, but they
1:33:11
do.
1:33:12
Yeah.
1:33:13
Because, you know, Twitter is also fast.
1:33:14
It just pulls out of your fingers pretty quickly.
1:33:15
Yeah.
1:33:16
Like the, did you see the case of the British broadcaster who's one of these old, very funny,
1:33:21
like, Frankie, so on.
1:33:22
So he's been around forever and he's still at a radio show and I think LBC in the UK.
1:33:28
And when Harry and Meghan had their first child, he, he has a long history of doing these
1:33:36
funny jokes of like, you know, in the 1950s, like chimps dressed up in, uh, in royal outfits
1:33:42
and things like that.
1:33:43
Oh, you know, I don't.
1:33:44
Yeah.
1:33:45
An old black and white photo of a couple of, of a couple of chimps, uh, one in a, one in
1:33:50
a tuxedo and the other one in the bridal gown or something and a little chickpea or something.
1:33:54
Yes.
1:33:55
Um, and it was like, he had like breaking, you know, first images of royal family exiting
1:33:59
all the exiting hospital.
1:34:01
And it didn't occur to him that Meghan is a woman of color and you know, these historical
1:34:06
things.
1:34:07
For him, it's just, it's funny because it's a champion of costume.
1:34:09
That's, yeah.
1:34:10
And he lost his show.
1:34:11
Of course.
1:34:12
Yeah.
1:34:13
Yeah.
1:34:14
And, you know, it wasn't, and he deleted, he even deleted it at the moment.
1:34:15
Someone raised that.
1:34:16
And someone said, you know, there's that whole thing, that whole history here and he was
1:34:19
like, oh, shit.
1:34:20
And, you know, there's a history of him tweeting monkeys in, in preposterous outfits throughout
1:34:26
his career where it has nothing to do with people of color.
1:34:28
Um, but yeah, he did it too fast.
1:34:31
Yes.
1:34:32
And sure.
1:34:33
Yeah.
1:34:34
Totally.
1:34:35
I think sometimes a way of thinking what people, you say like, oh, oh, I noticed above
1:34:39
of what deleted this.
1:34:40
Why did you delete this?
1:34:41
It's just like, if they deleted it just they, they clearly realized it screwed it up from
1:34:45
the way you can't, you can't on the one hand say why did you delete it?
1:34:49
And also why don't you delete it?
1:34:51
You're monster.
1:34:52
So if you, I think if you're someone who has a track record, you know, if you're someone
1:34:55
who is just clearly, you know, if you can, you're not, if you're someone who just, you
1:35:00
know, I don't want to start naming, you know, but if you're someone who's clearly a
1:35:04
troll or what have you and is always putting out horrible stuff. Yeah, go after that person,
1:35:10
but if it's someone who just clearly is just, yeah, like I said, just go on through the wrong
1:35:13
door. If you can try and for their own mental health, because that's the thing, big people should read
1:35:20
John Ronson's, so you've been publicly shamed, just like the damage that can be done by these
1:35:25
pylons on people who, yes, they fucked up, but if we can find ways to not make a global thing out
1:35:32
of them, um, because it's just, I mean, there's no winner. There's no winner. The fact that I even know
1:35:37
the name Justin Sackert. Yes, yes, exactly. You don't know her. Yes, probably good that you don't.
1:35:43
That's it. But read John Ronson's book, because it's absolutely fabulous. I think before you get your
1:35:47
Twitter account, they just go, can you just have a look at this? If you just read this or you can
1:35:51
do the audio book and hear him say, this book was written by me, John Ronson. Um, and then, uh,
1:35:57
then you can, then, then you can have a Twitter account in a way we go. He's a public treasure.
1:36:01
As are you, come for your book. Oh, that's good. On politics and stuff. Uh, and it is, uh,
1:36:10
available everywhere and everywhere very soon. Just in time for what may or may not be a federal
1:36:16
election in Australia, we don't know when it's coming. It's, it's a short read. So if you like,
1:36:22
if you're not a big fan of reading, if you hate the book, then you'll love it's
1:36:26
brevity. Exactly. However it now is. Yeah. So Evan, Evan Williams and I have written, we're
1:36:31
back to it with jokes about Australian politics. And, uh, we hope you enjoy it. And can people catch
1:36:35
your, uh, 730 sketches on the web somewhere? Absolutely. So you can follow me on Twitter at
1:36:40
at Mark Humphreys. Otherwise, I'm on Instagram at Humphreys Mark couldn't get Mark Humphreys
1:36:46
demo. And on Facebook at Mark Humphreys comedy again couldn't get Mark Humphreys. It's better
1:36:51
than having done like underscore Mark, dash Humphreys plus. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Yep.
1:36:57
Uh, well, wonderful to show to you. I'll see you in Cancel Culture Jail where we will both
1:37:01
inevitably end up. Thank you. Thank you, Josh.